Memoir and Criticism in Matthew Specktor’s ‘Always Crashing the Same Car’
As a critic of both films and literature, Matthew Specktor has a balanced touch that keeps the scales even in his memoir, Always Crashing in the Same Car.
cultural criticism
Pretend It’s a City Proves Once Again, You Can’t Argue with Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz’s ubiquitous little smirk is still going as strong as ever because she never feels bad about herself.
Zadie Smith’s ‘Intimations’ Essays Pandemic with Erudite Wit and Compassion
Zadie Smith's Intimations is an essay collection of gleaming, wry, and crisp prose that wears its erudition lightly but takes flight on both everyday and lofty matters.
First Tragedy, Then Farce, Then What?
Riffing off Marx's riff on Hegel on history, art historian and critic Hal Foster contemplates political culture and cultural politics in the age of Donald Trump in What Comes After Farce?
Does Inclusivity Mean That Everyone Does the Same Thing?
What is the meaning of diversity in today’s world? Russell Jacoby raises and addresses some pertinent questions in his latest work, On Diversity.
Billy Corgan Brainwashed Me: ’90s Alternative Rock and the Introspective Abyss
Once in its thrall, these days I find the overriding message of '90s alt-rock especially naïve and even dangerous.
What the Sirens Taught Us: An Elegy for Mermaidens
There's something not-quite-right, something distinctly off-kilter, about the Mermaidens' feminine voice in New Zealand's music scene.
The New Old Flower-Power Fantasy of Greta Van Fleet
If Greta Van Fleet are that wonderful horrible thing called zeitgeisty, that zeitgeist is defined by desire to escape to a fantasized past where the battles were cleaner and the battle lines simpler than today's appear to be.
Culture Is Not Innocent: An Interview with Fatima Bhutto
Fatima Bhutto discusses her new book on pop culture from the Global South, which goes above and beyond, among other things, the "sluggish, bloated, less urgent" films dominating Hollywood.
Bad and Mad: The Troubled and Troubling Pop Culture War Vet
In these trying times of Trump, as American chauvinism thumps its chest and loudly threatens those who question, there is little room for contemporary filmmakers, or policymakers, who encourage sympathy for the war-damaged, the wounded, the wrecked.