Face to Face
The arrival of the pandemic-era summer was a freewheeling mental battle between appreciation of health and stability, and an almost selfish disdain for a locked-in, isolated life that I had never imagined I would have to experience.
Posts by Ella Faust
Ambiguity In the Time of COVID-19
My usual response when I decide that any aspect of my life is spiraling out from under my possession is usually the impulse to regain control in whatever way possible. But as I settled into an unfamiliar back room of my parent’s new apartment, months and months of uncertainty stretched out onto the bare white walls around me. I felt any semblance of a “plan” spiral out into a realm that I could no longer grasp.
How Gen Z Hears the Sirens of the Past
Today’s Gen Z youth have created a culture of hybridized nostalgia—an aestheticization of past fashions and lifestyles filtered through a modern lens.
About The Common Reader
The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
The Current Issue
The real Elvis is American, remember, and America is a consumer society. The desires we project, the stuff we buy—that is what feels real to us. It lets us have any Elvis we want. He left plenty of kitsch in his wake, plenty of pseudo-religion, plenty of Elvis jokes—but he was not, is not, a joke. He lived our contradictions, released our inhibitions, and lost himself in the process.
