Ben, Author at Common Reader

Henry Wallace, the Progressive Few People Remember

Wallace wrecked his political career with his run for the presidency in 1948. His biggest mistake was not quitting the government when Roosevelt was in his final weeks to take over the leadership of the liberals, as Eleanor Roosevelt begged him to. But perhaps he knew he would wreck his career. Perhaps he wanted to, as, after all, he did not really have the makeup to be a successful politician. But he was one of the most important political figures of his time.

People & Places | Reviews

Fugitive Kindness and the Joy of the Migrants

By Tolu Daniel

For a moment, I caught myself thinking: this dancefloor is the happiest place on earth. Not in the saccharine way Disney markets happiness, but in the way fugitive joy exists—imperfect, defiant, and fleeting. The kind of happiness that knows how precarious it is and yet insists on itself anyway.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Unforgetting Fannie Hurst

By William J. Maxwell

From one angle, at our hundred-year distance, Hurst’s schmaltzy naturalism makes her a kind of art monster in reverse: not a great avant-gardist with noxious politics and a track record of abuse, but a respectably woke voice, responsibly raised for some of the right intersectional causes, with an unforgivably corny style. From another, equally telling angle, however, Hurst’s work nowadays looks like some of the most cannily effective proletarian literature ever produced in the United States.

People & Places | Essays

Gunn Control

By Jason P. Vest

James Gunn’s Superman gives his film’s Man of Tomorrow three notable speeches—one about kindness, one about respect, and one about honor—that, in any normal year, would make every eyeball in the theatre roll back into its socket.

Arts & Letters | Reviews

The Patriotic Glamor of Short Hair, Brooks Brothers Suits, and West Civ Classes

By Claude R. Marx

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd reminds us that we are still living with the impact of the conservative campus activism of the 1960s and 1970s. And she argues that the current leaders of the right are the natural heirs to their ideological forefathers, not an aberration as some maintain.

Society & Culture | Reviews

A Real Knowhere Man, Part Two

By John Griswold

I was used to my makeup and costume, but the one-inch heels, painful toes, and tight uppers of my tanker boots made me walk suspiciously, like a poor guy with a belly full of free eggs and a heart filled with larceny. My overall straps hung down in back like I had forgotten to fasten them after a trip to the outhouse. Yet the staff treated me and everyone else with cheerful professionalism. They knew how to handle an army of amateurs and loose cannons and get the job done.

Arts & Letters | Essays

How the Wreckage of Slavery Washes Upon the Shores of a Small Island

By Jeannette Cooperman

This island is extraordinary, and indifferent to that fact. The past is alive wherever you turn, though with few historic markers and little protection. Artifacts, ruins, and human remains have been tossed aside, laid claim to, or layered over, yet they refuse to be erased.

Society & Culture | Essays

Why We Surrender to Logos

By Ben Fulton

Should we not be grateful that companies care enough to hire skilled graphic designers educated in the ways of soft-selling via design and color, and not the bark of street hawkers?

Society & Culture | Dispatches

How Dorm Rooms Chart the Dimensions of Maturity

By Ben Fulton

(Photo by Marcus Loke via Unsplash) People in their late teens and early twenties are prone to conversational silence around most adults, their parents included. But there is an easy way around this reticence if you want to get to know them better: Just peek into their…

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Recipes for Rascals in Michigan

By John Griswold

Roasting different vegetables on a shared baking sheet, for example, requires some sensitivity and planning. How dense, how hydrated, how sweet, how easily burned is each one? Which one has an aggressive nature; which is mild? How much time does each require to become the best version of itself?

People & Places | Uncategorized | Dispatches