Would Adorno have hated jazz less if he’d had better speakers?
Essays
“Her favorite author is Fuk-Yoo. The great French fi-lo-sof, My-Shell Fuk-Yoo.”
Michel and Mom
When salmon women summer camp ends, what will I do?
Go Fish
Resort to Boulder
Last Sundance in Park City
Among filmmakers, dread over money seemed to outweigh any sense of buzz. By the first weekend the lack of major sales had already become a central topic of conversation. As it happens, two of the best films in Sundance’s slate confronted the industry’s distribution crisis head-on.
Wish You Were Her
Aboard the celebrity impersonators’ cruise
Martha Stewart, Walter White, and Rodney Dangerfield walk into a bar. The bartender looks at Dangerfield, asks what he’s having. “Vodka soda,” he replies. The bartender starts shoveling ice. “Double?” he checks. “Course I am,” says Dangerfield. “Dangerfield’s dead.”
In the Wages for Housework Archives
I understand that Betty Friedan is starting a bank
The feminists got headaches and worked so relentlessly that they forgot to eat. They smoked too much and made half-hearted attempts to quit. They sent each other presents — articles of clothing, a copy of the latest pamphlet from the Radicalesbians. They slept with disappointing men and mused about bad sex under capitalism. They expressed adoration for one another. They earnestly poured their hearts into writing and recording songs about housework. They organized community meetings with the mothers of schoolkids and then got bored with the mundane things the mothers wanted.
The Second-Term Aesthetic
Have you ever really looked at Trump’s hands?
So, in the cramped airplane’s limited sightlines, I looked for clues about whether these were just regular Midwestern dads, like me, flying for work, or whether they were regular Midwestern dads, flying for work, to terrorize and disappear people. How would I know the difference?
Experiences in Groups
Should left movements use group relations?
The more experienced attendees explain that here, one’s individual experience is seen as a symptom of the group’s dynamics. If someone is physically ill, it is because the system needs to eject someone; if someone feels rejected, it is because the group needs a scapegoat to hold everyone’s feelings of shame. If you act out or say something inflammatory, it’s because you’ve been unconsciously mobilized by others. Everything means something: if you close a window, you are trying to protect the group. If you’re sleepy, it’s because the group is making you sleepy. You do not have food poisoning; you have group poisoning.
If a person cannot display ceramic eggs in a museum, I think, then a great deal is at risk.
Lifetime Achievement
Our Butterfly
God said no
Delivered Youssef to the place in Maine. I say “the place,” because I don’t know how to describe it. Is it a camp? A hospital? An asylum?
Creature of the Late Afternoon
Three generations: dead, old, and middle-aged
“Don’t write about me. Write about Korea, about the issues,” Mom has told me multiple times. Dad: “You seem to write about our family when you run out of topics.” I am embarrassed by memoir and simultaneously drawn to the form. I am always reading books by sons and daughters.
Who I was becoming was the least of my concerns. We were at war.
