Ben, Author at Common Reader

The Presumption of Maps

It was the kind of area where my incomplete understanding, which should mean comedy, became not tragedy, not emptiness or absence, but presence without meaning.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

The Death of Parties Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

By Ben Fulton

Are we too afraid to admit that other people are just boring compared to the internet? Are we too timid to say that what we really want is a “party” redefined, reformulated, or done up some other way?

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Of American Frogs and Pirates

By Chris King

The handlers of the competing frogs were not seasoned adults with complex strategies for teaching a frog to jump from a dead sit upon a prompt. The frog handlers were children. Their contribution to training their frogs appeared to be getting their frogs to the competition alive.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Lennon-Ono Documentary Also a Snapshot of America

By John Griswold

Because this film cannot help suggesting a comparison of ’60s engagement with post-millennial numbness, it becomes a bit of an indictment of us, a spreading-around of Hannah Arendt’s evil.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

The Presidential Fitness Test Is Back to Shame Us All over Again? Great!

By Ben Fulton

If any single contradiction defines us as Americans, it is that we are gluttons for the spectacle of team sports, but for the most part we starve ourselves of individual exercise. Our nation’s high schools abound in football and basketball teams as social and civic…

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

I Am Not Very Happy Now: And Other Lessons from Small Children About Facing Pain

By Chris King

Diversity, inclusion, and the pursuit of equity may be on the run in the 2020s, but I look around this campus, this city, and this country, and I can see that a lot of different kinds of people are still here. I am still here. We are still here. What now?

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Melania Trump, International Woman of Mystery

By Gerald Early

Her book design itself seems an exercise in branding. Only the word “Melania” on the cover. Nothing else, indicating not just fame but a sort of stardom, a woman known by only one name like singers Madonna and Beyoncé or, more fitting here, models Iman and Twiggy.

Reviews

The Populism of Art

By Jeannette Cooperman

Why does art ease our minds? I think because it takes us away from words. It lets us express what words cannot. There is mischief in creation, after all. You are plotting and scheming, not mindlessly obeying.

Essays

A Real Knowhere Man

By John Griswold

No one had explained what extras could do (choose their own movements to some extent) or could not do (complain or speak to the big names). No one ever said not to look into a camera lens or try to steal a scene. (Of course I knew better than that.) I did not know that most of the main actors were on site. I did not know what determined the length of workdays, or how often water or pee breaks might happen. I did not know yet the tricks some extras used to get on set when it was not their turn, or how many took leftover meals and crafty snacks home to live on as part of their pay.

Essays

The Failure of Disney’s New Snow White

By Danielle Ridolfi

Children’s media creators are not just benevolent spinners of yarns—they are business owners, media executives, and freelance creatives. The need to turn a profit has long lived in harmony with the need to create high-quality content. But Disney, unfortunately, has begun to view quality as superfluous. Their live-action remakes are thinly-veiled cash grabs that lazily recycle old content and direct viewers to endless scores of merchandise with little creative energy required.

Reviews