Violent Art: On Learning to Shudder
/In this regular feature, John Cotter examines two brutal, disturbing pieces of 20th-Century German art—and they come disturbingly close to examining him in return.
Read MoreGood and Bad Replications
/Studio interference severely compromised Ridley Scott’s visually stunning 1982 film Blade Runner. Now with Blade Runner: The Final Cut on DVD, Brian Kirker explores the remastering of a masterpiece.
Read MoreGladly Possessed
/Joy Division was post-punk at its ecstatic, abrasive best. Peter Law reviews Control, the soundtrack to the documentary that briefly brought the emblematic band back on the stage.
Read MoreNoises in the Dark
/Uncanny Bodies identifies an early affinity between talking pictures and the horror genre. Adam Golaski finds this chillingly true, but sees Robert Spadoni as the wrong man to explain it.
Read MoreQuiet Storm
/Jazz composer Terence Blanchard’s score movingly complemented Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke. David Meadow evaluates whether the music stands alone in the album A Tale of God’s Will: A Requiem for Katrina.
Read MoreVain Offerings
/In The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs reduced learning to the memorization of trivia; now in The Year of Living Biblically he reduces religious faith to growing a beard. Steve Donoghue, in turn, reduces A.J. Jacobs.
Read MoreOne Encounter: On Packing Two Bags for Mexico
/In our regular feature, Scott Esposito expands on the sublime agony of filling a suitcase with an entire year’s worth of books.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: Our Jolly Round Whirling Earth
/Gun-and-net-toting naturalists seldom produce a better writer than William Beebe. In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the science writing of a more invasive age.
Read MoreOne Encounter: On Reading Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, translated from the French
/Reading a book rendered from Polish to French to English is like playing a game of Telephone. In our regular feature, Andrew Crocker expounds on the pleasures of translations.
Read MoreSalad Days
/Teaching a man to fish isn’t enough: you’ve also got to teach him to cook what he catches. Hugh Merwin challenges the usefulness of Barbara Kingsolver’s folksy Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: That is Not Sad; This is Not Funny
/In this monthly feature, Adam Golaski resurrects the poetry of Paul Hannigan in all its acerbic and ominous brilliance
Read MoreFriends on the Street
/Can a writer be objective about poverty? John Cotter thinks William T. Vollmann’s striking approach in Poor People is both beautiful and frustratingly distant.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: It Wasn’t What He Wanted
/In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the great life and writing of Gerald of Wales, a continuously frustrated candidate for the Archbishopric of Wales.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: Nicholas Monsarrat
/In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue touts the overlooked sea novels of Nicholas Monsarrat.
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