Edward McPherson

Edward McPherson, Assistant Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, is author of three nonfiction books <em>Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat (Faber & Faber), The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats (HarperCollins) and, most recently, The History of the Future: American Essays (Coffee House Press). He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Salon, The Paris Review, Tin House, The American Scholar, The Gettysburg Review, The New York Observer, I.D., Esopus, Epoch, and Talk, among others.

Posts by Edward McPherson

Turtles All the Way Down

In a number of ancient traditions, the world is believed to rest on the back of a giant turtle, which leads to the epistemological question of what might be supporting that turtle.

Lost and Found, Reviews

Actions Louder Than Words

Today’s films revel in saturated noise. The silent films of Buster Keaton, by contrast, bring us back to a time when film narrative worked its silent magic in ways that also asked us to impose our imaginations upon what we could only see.