Ben, Author at Common Reader

Goodwill to All

After a time the bin contents blurred into a single substance the color of meat hash. I grew up with food insecurity and unlivable housing, and the deep misery of poverty is always accessible to me.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Want a Cure for Doomscrolling? Try P.G. Wodehouse

By Jeannette Cooperman

P.G. Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse, just to add a wrinkle) was one of a type I used to despise and now grudgingly admire: those who maintain their equilibrium by refusing to look at anything dark or glum. Sturdy as a hard rubber ball, he bounced along in near-total denial.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

The Claudine Gay Affair

By Gerald Early

The right has been on this push about Blacks lowering the standards of higher education since the early days of affirmative action in college admissions back in the early 1970s. Many Black commentators and activists have chosen to circle the wagons to defend Gay and cry racism. This is understandable. But there is a larger issue here about exactly how our race is supposed to function within the American university.

Essays

Is Mickey Mouse Evil, or Are We?

By Jeannette Cooperman

Are we taking revenge on The Mouse, or on ourselves?

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Represent Yourself Before Others Can Represent You

By John Griswold

Never ask your children or close friends to name or represent you. My son, taking his cue during our conversation from trash bins at the curb, said my classical-poet name could be Bald Trash Can. Later, a friend of thirty years said it should be Dirty Worn-Out Apartment Dweller.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Why, and How, the Colors of Mental Health Matter

By Ben Fulton

“Neuro Blooms” shows us how mental states might be projected outside our innermost thoughts, out into the physical world, so that they might be drawn back into our consciousness and reinterpreted in new ways.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Poor Things, Us

By Jeannette Cooperman

With “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos has given us a film that is funny, sharp, poignant, imaginative, and visually stunning. I wonder if he knew his baby-woman would also summon a New Year’s resolution for the other end of life.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Let Charles Dickens’s The Chimes Invigorate Your Sense of Hope

By Ben Fulton

“The Chimes” is not likely to be adapted for the screen any time soon, uneven as it is when stacked against “A Christmas Carol.” But Toby Veck can be counted among Dickens’s great, undiscovered characters. And the story’s warning, amidst our own ongoing sour times, rings as true as its namesake.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Tom Smothers, a Lesson in Modernity

By John Griswold

As a child of an ironic, counter-cultural age I had to find my way through comic appearances to serious intent and personal bravery. Tommy Smothers was maybe the first entertainer I understood in this respect.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

How Zero-Sum Thinking Divides Us

By Jeannette Cooperman

Zero-sum thinking shows up all over the place. It puddles in the Congressional aisle no one dares cross. It puts up trade barriers, panics at trade deficits, and insists on protectionism, isolationism, nationalism. It builds walls, both literal and figurative, to keep out strangers.

Society & Culture | Dispatches