The Unbearable Awkwardness of Being
A review of Adam Kotsko’s Awkwardness Adam Kotsko’s Awkwardness is the kind of criticism — pertinent, witty, sophisticated but without sophistry — in which one can glimpse a…
In Memoriam, Salinger
In commemoration of J.D. Salinger, we repost one of our favorite essays, “Better to Fade Away than to Burn Out?” Editor Mary Borkowski defends authorial privacy in an era where digitally enabled self-promotion is the norm; and with the rise of self-publishing—an imperative.
The Tourist Sublime
When we travel, the meanings consumerism ascribes to objects become opaque, and the choices we have to make — where to eat, where to go, what to do — can abruptly seem arbitrary, pointless. The ubiquitous marketing discourse that normally serves to orient us instead prompts terror in the midst of plenty. The consumerist bounty
Open Books: The E-Reader Reads You
E-books promise not a plenitude of ideas and narratives but a wealth of information to better rationalize the unpredictable behavior of readers. E-readers make us into the content.
Judging Books by Their Covers
One solution to the publishing quandary is in these very editions. To make books more appealing as objects, even as aesthetic objects thanks to thoughtful design, taps into part of what makes reading a pleasure as a tangible sport, not something you download and scroll through on an electronic device.
SEO & The Disappearing Self
(via) “On Facebook, our communication is assessed like online advertising — how many click-throughs did it inspire? This prompts us to make what we say…
Open Secrets: Literature as Gossip in the Digital Age
It’s a great moment in Pedro Almodóvar’s film Todo Sobre Mi Madre: A transsexual woman stands on a stage and explains all the reconstructive and cosmetic…
The Loser Wins
Zuckerberg is not just any loser. His victory is not a win for equality, but instead signals the rise of a new, no less inegalitarian…
Love Worth Fighting For
More than ever, we now need to think of love as ennobling resistance to what alreadyis, modeling the idea that difficult things are worth the…
Spontaneity On Demand
Salvador Dalí. A Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds (1936) “Mediating our identity and our experience recapitulates it in a form that can circulate and be…
children are our future: resistance, addiction and the digital natives
It’s easy enough to amass anecdotal evidence of rising internet addiction. The marathon Asian gamers who prefer to starve rather than leave their terminal; the…
On the Virtues of Ingratitude
Gratitude hurts our critical capacities by forbidding dissatisfaction with a scale that tilts, albeit by chance, in one’s favor.
Escapism and Art For Lonely People
On some level, probably the first and most immediate level, all art is fantasy.
Demoting Beauty
Our response to beauty is our heart volunteering us for the gentlest form of domination.
Power and the Pickup Artist
Rather than establish a spontaneous, open-ended and reciprocal relation with another person, the pickup artists want to assure that interpersonal exchanges follow a rigid script that culminates in sex
And It Felt Like A Kiss: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Specter
Rock and roll has no morals. Of course, that’s much of what is and has always been attractive about it. But maybe there’s something legitimately chilling beyond where lawlessness and rebellion are sexy.