Ben, Author at Common Reader

The “Six-seven!” Phenomenon Taunts Slang to Make Sense

Slang is those half-hidden words, code intended only for certain circles, or what our parents used to call “the in-crowd.” “Six-seven!” seems unique in that it has nothing to hide. Past slang involving numbers—the one-to-ten scale of physical attractiveness, the “Five-0” reference to police, the “4:20” signifier for a daily dose of cannabis—all had immediate or even urgent significance. “Six-seven,” by contrast, just sits in its own hollow existence.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Are Flash Mobs Over or Just Ruined?

By Jeannette Cooperman

I fall for these every time. Did we really have to commodify spontaneous joy?

Society & Culture | Dispatches

Of Living Alone

By John Griswold

Of course, living alone has few rules—one of its upsides usually—and nobody said you have to be that quiet.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

The Rich Ambiguity of “Antifa Founder’s Girlfriend”

By Ben Fulton

It seems fitting that this unnamed woman has so far proved—at least until Noem and her team choose to reveal more—as shadowy as the group she is alleged to have allied with, or was at least sympathetic to.

Society & Culture | Dispatches

The World of Left-Wing Terrorist Films Is Bigger Than You Think

By Ben Fulton

Do you harbor secret, romantic longings for doing battle with “The Man,” but without the consequences of violent action and even murderous mayhem such causes reap? If so, you have plenty of films to choose from.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Lucky Prescience in One Battle After Another

By John Griswold

Paul Thomas Anderson’s films always have dark humor, but I have to think he may have felt a greater need to signal satire back then, which plays a little unevenly now.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Found Objects: Myself

By John Griswold

I looked and looked. It was like looking at another part of myself.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

How Dickens Helped Us Understand “Neurodiversity”

Mr. Dick and his kite may offer an ideal escape from troubled thoughts, but we are drawn to him because he is also heartfelt enough to be real. As pointed out earlier, ‘David Copperfield’ is Dickens’s most autobiographical work. We read fiction because it is not fact. We also read fiction because it never strays too far from fact.

Arts & Letters | Uncategorized | Dispatches

In and Out of the Shadow of Willie Mays

By Gerald Early

A Giant Among Giants is not a “life and times” biography. It does not situate McCovey in the social and historical contexts of America beyond baseball. The book is mostly stories and quotes from various ballplayers of McCovey’s era (1959-1980), speaking well of him, of course, but providing a vivid portrait of the man as a ballplayer.

People & Places | Reviews

The Unmoving Grasshopper and the Oddball Friends Who Say “I Love You”

By John Griswold

Why is it only certain characters among my friends—the recovered addict who got rich off disaster services, the photographer who did federal time on a RICO conviction, the former scout and paratrooper with traumatic brain injury—tell me they love me? My polite friends, the “normal” ones, the ones with long, seemingly solid marriages and steady white-collar jobs and no priors, do not say such things, despite often having been in my life longer or more directly.

Belief | People & Places | Essays