Ben, Author at Common Reader

Are You Stodgy, Middling, or Wild?

“Metaphysical Animals” is not a dry book about philosophy; nor is it a juicy book about women’s friendships and lovers. It is both, in perfect balance.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Letter to a Young Leftist

By Jeannette Cooperman

You wanted to cut through all the tired old institutionalized ideals and raise up various identity groups’ struggles for justice, raise them so high they could not be ignored. But the ideas that shaped your impatience are grim.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

The Holdovers is a New Holiday Classic

By John Griswold

Paul Giamatti, who won and has been nominated for dozens of awards in his career, was passed over by the Academy Awards for his work with Alexander Payne in “Sideways.” The similarity of the role in “The Holdovers” will make it interesting to see if he is nominated this time.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Why Your Child’s First Rock Concert Matters More Than You Think

By Ben Fulton

Watching my daughter bob her head in time to the music, her fist pumping, I saw that she was in a moment all her own, along with others who followed the same band, all in moments of their own. It was a temporary collective, a bonding with strangers by the odd osmosis of music that grabs the young consciousness at almost every corner of being.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

“Adventure” Means Something New These Days

By Jeannette Cooperman

The title of Christopher Schaberg’s latest book is the perfect oxymoron: a frisson of thrilling risk followed by a grim grown-up reminder of constraint.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

What Made Americans So Lonely

By Jeannette Cooperman

If you are alone, you have to reach out again and again to fill your life with meaningful connections. It is all terribly hard work. But it is nowhere near as hard as the alternative.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Oscar Nominee The Taste of Things is Abundant with Passion

By John Griswold

“The Taste of Things” has so many set-pieces of cooking that it feels like a dare to override the conventions of drama, which might seem to require that the meal get cooked, served, and eaten so the difficulties of relationship can be ennacted.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

White Lies Seem Civilized—But They Drive Us Apart

By Jeannette Cooperman

Research now shows that sustaining even a tiny white lie requires quite a bit of bandwidth, and people falter if they are tired or multitasking. Intuiting this, and lazy by nature, I vowed in my teens that I would find gentle ways to tell the truth.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

On Becoming a “Morning Person”

By Ben Fulton

Once you get in the habit, you soon discover that 7 am simply will not do. The 8 am hour is the stuff of horror, and 9 am is for louts with the blood pressure of a year-old marshmallow. Only 5:30 or earlier will suffice, when the gray light of dawn verges on the cusp of its full spectrum.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

James Forman, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Black Americans, Jews, and Israel: An Addendum

By Gerald Early

I think my sister was convinced that in order to be true to herself as a Black person she had to be anti-Israel. I understood that years ago and understand it now. Just as a point of racial pride, forget all the left-wing scaffolding. How could she be for a Jewish state when she thought about how Jews were instrumental in financially and ideologically supporting the Black Freedom movement in the United States?

Essays