Ben, Author at Common Reader

Whacked Out Sports: A Cultural Clue?

This show is so White, so retro-male, so ripe for scathing dismissal by the snooty elite. There is even a class overlay.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Vanishing, Civilizing Art of Marginalia

By Jeannette Cooperman

Notes jotted in a margin carry on a conversation with future readers. Not with the authors themselves, mind, and often it is lucky for them that they remain oblivious.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

The Woman Who Taught Us Not to Trust Our Memories Has Some Doozies of Her Own

By Jeannette Cooperman

Many of us are vulnerable to suggestion, our memories blurry and uncertain. But intense emotion can also etch an experience in memory with every detail intact. Overly involved therapists can push a certain narrative until their client believes it verbatim. But the mind can also shelter us from pain and release it back to us little by little, as we can handle it.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

What Bloodshed in Haiti Means for Us

By Jeannette Cooperman

(Photo by Patti Gabriel) When I learned that Jovenel Moïse, president of Haiti, had been assassinated—after riots and demands that he resign—something inside me crumpled. Again? I was in Haiti during its 2010 presidential elections, along with the professional photographer who shot the image above, Patti Gabriel. We…

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Invitation to the Dance

By Jeannette Cooperman

Dancing in groups can strengthen social bonds, researchers have found; it brings a feeling of connection and unity. Why? Because when we are all moving in the same way at the same time, swept up by rhythm and melody, the boundaries of our lonely little separate selves blur.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Why Nobody Knows Moholy-Nagy’s Name

By Jeannette Cooperman

Moholy-Nagy had never gone to art school, and he had never taught. He had an almost childlike interest in anything new, especially the machines that were transforming industry.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Part of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Is Gone

By John Griswold

In Louisiana’s future, the EPA says, there will be “retreating shores,” stronger and more frequent hurricanes, more flooding, more heat than ever, and reduced crop and fishery yields. And as disasters linked to climate change increase in scale and number, we can all expect to pay for them, with interrupted commerce and supply lines, higher insurance rates, and more federal aid for recoveries like this one.

Essays

The Wonder World of Whiteness

By Gerald Early

I am not so sure if Williamson is a conservative as much as he is a contrarian, at times a kind of White Stanley Crouch, though less verbose. At times, a kind of Hunter Thompson but less gonzo. I did not always agree with his interpretation of the world as he saw it, but I always found what he saw stimulating and more than occasionally trenchant.

Reviews

The Attention Economy

By Jeannette Cooperman

We talk about paying attention, as though it is a debt—and these days, attention is definitely currency. We still use money and buy material stuff, but these transactions all begin by gaining our limited attention.

Essays

The House, and How to Run It

By Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff

Ball’s portrait of Pelosi’s life in politics is a detailed and exhaustive exploration of Pelosi’s life in politics–an important project that fills a needed gap. But the very nature of the book reveals that the role of gender in negotiation is complex, and Ball’s handling of the issue represents a meta-commentary on the challenge of understanding it.

Reviews