carrie-fisher

faith

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/faith-2017/"></div><p>By <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/michelle-chihara/">Michelle Chihara</a></p>
<p>2016 began with David Bowie losing his battle with cancer. <a href="http://thisblueangel.com/2016/04/21/7-things-about-prince/%5D" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'http://thisblueangel.com/2016/04/21/7-things-about-prince/%5D', 'Prince');">Prince</a> died in the spring. George Michael died on Christmas. Last Christmas. Carrie Fisher died two days later, on my birthday, as it happens. Her mother Debbie Reynolds’ heart broke planning her daughter’s funeral. She died the next day. I imagine exquisite drag queens and other unsung heroes greeting them all with cocktails in the heavens, saying, <em>I know you still had work to do down there but we just couldn’t wait for you any longer. It’s so grim these days, watching them destroy themselves.</em> <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/faith-2017/#more-2913" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
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Faith in 2017

shoes

beyonce

Beyoncé

sarahmichelle

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/beyonce-lessons/"></div><p><em>LARB editors <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/michelle-chihara">Michelle Chihara</a> and <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/sarah-mesle">Sarah Mesle</a> went to see Beyoncé’s “</em>Formation”<em> tour’s recent stop at Dodger Stadium.  This is what they thought.</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Michelle: </strong>Sarah, we know the first thing we have to talk about is the shoes.</p>
<figure id="attachment_2235" style="width: 474px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Shoes.jpg"><img class="size-large wp-image-2235" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Shoes-1024x768.jpg" alt="Six-inch heels, she walked in the club like nobody’s business / Goddamn, she murdered everybody and I was her witness " width="474" height="356" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Shoes-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Shoes-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Shoes-768x576.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Six-inch heels, she walked in the club like nobody’s business / Goddamn, she murdered everybody and I was her witness</figcaption></figure>
<p> <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/beyonce-lessons/#more-2234" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
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Beyoncé Lessons

<h4>Michelle Chihara (MFA, PhD UC Irvine) is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at Whittier College, where she teaches contemporary American literature and creative writing. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Studies in American Fiction, n+1, Trop Magazine, the Green Mountains Review, the Santa Monica Review, Echoes, Mother Jones, and the Boston Phoenix, among others. Her research involves real estate, financial panics and contemporary culture. You can find her online at <a href="http://m/" target="_blank">http://m</a><a href="http://ichelle-chihara.com/" target="_blank">ichelle-chihara.com</a>.</h4>

Michelle Chihara

Strategic Audio: Podcasts, Propaganda, and the Fairy Tales of Data Mining

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil

Cultural Studies

LARB Lit: Choose

LARB Lit

<h4>Tom Zoellner is the author of five nonfiction books, including <em>Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World</em>. He is the co-author of <em>The New York Times</em> bestselling book <em>An Ordinary Man</em>,&nbsp;and his book <em>Uranium</em> won the 2011 Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. His writing has appeared in <em>Harper’s</em>, <em>The&nbsp;</em><em>Atlantic</em>, <em>Time</em>,&nbsp;<em>Foreign</em><em>&nbsp;</em><em>Policy</em>, <em>Departures</em>, <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, <em>Men’s Health</em>, the&nbsp;<em>Oxford</em><em>&nbsp;</em><em>American</em>, and many other places. An Associate Professor of English at Chapman University, he lives in downtown Los Angeles.</h4>

Tom Zoellner

You’re The Puppet: Trump, the Death of Truth, and the Silence of the Left

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins

Politics

Neighbors

Realizing Capital

Scandals and Abstraction

What We Talk About When We Talk About Finance

Economics and Finance

Kingmakers

"Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television." —Woody Allen

Television

Being Theon Greyjoy, or Why This Dick In A Box Matters

Michelle Chihara (MFA, PhD UC Irvine) is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at Whittier College, where she teaches contemporary American literature and creative writing. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Studies in American Fiction, n+1, Trop Magazine, the Green Mountains Review, the Santa Monica Review, Echoes, Mother Jones, and the Boston Phoenix, among others. Her research involves real estate, financial panics and contemporary culture. You can find her online at <a href="http://m/" target="_blank">http://m</a><a href="http://ichelle-chihara.com/" target="_blank">ichelle-chihara.com</a>.