Punk Isn't
Asking “What is punk?” is the wrong question. The answer inevitably makes itself wrong
Digressions of an Opium-Eater
Jeet Thayil's debut, Narcopolis, is as much a social novel as it is a drug novel
The Secret Shopper
“Inattentive,” “rude,” and “dumb” service workers damage the value of their bosses’ product in subtle acts of psycho-social sabotage so pervasive that an entire industry of mystery shoppers has sprung up to combat it
General Strike Tomorrow!
No work! No school! No shopping! No banking! No scabbing! See you in the streets. (video via NYCGeneralStrike)
Collateral Damage
Former Los Angeles Times book critic Susan Salter Reynolds and writer and editor Willie Osterweil talk about what it means to be a working writer in a precarious economy and how it has changed the nature of written culture and book reviewing.
General Strike! May 1st!
The New Inquiry will be going black on May 1st. If you run a website, you should shut it down. If you work in an…
Wild In The Streets Panel!
On Tuesday night, New Inquiry hosted a screening and panel of the 60s youth-revolution exploitation film Wild in the Streets, at The Kitchen in Soho.…
Sunday Cartoon: March 25, 2012
by Alex Rosenbaum
Beyond the Valley of 1984
Miles Klee’s inventive, chaotic debut novel Ivyland gets stranded between dystopia and the apocalypse
Fear of an Ape Planet
Debating the blinkered Hollywood take on race in films like The Help and Rise of the Apes only helps perpetuate it Positive or negative, reviews of a new film…
Towards A New Film Criticism
What is Hollywood? Hollywood is a pool of money, power, and people. Hollywood is a monomaniacal schizophrenic, making films at the voices’ instruction. Each film represents a different voice in its head; some are violent, some frightening, some romantic, some beautiful. But all of them praise the perfect beauty of the commodified image.
Adolescence of the Undead
It is often said of fiction that it is “impossible to put down.” The suggestion is that what we want from reading is total submission:…
What We Talk About When We Talk About the Internet
The computer is the liar that always tells the truth. If you believe the lie—that what the computer does is beyond human comprehension, that its power exceeds its use value—then you are doomed to be its slave.
Twilight of the Cruise
The grid plan emanates from our weaknesses, this layout of avenues and streets, New York City, this system of 90 degree angles…it’s homogenizing, in a city where there is no homogenization available, where there is only total existence, total cacophony…