Arts & Letters

David Hockney “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy”

David Hockney, by Surprise

Stumbling upon “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy” by surprise was like waking up to Christmas morning, but reborn as an adult. The size, vibrancy, and overwhelming stillness of this painting are so impressive that it works almost as a trance, or incantation, of natural light.

The Man of Tomorrow, a Creation of Yesterday, Meets Us Today

It can be argued that Superman is a fascist symbol, or that he is a reworking of Jesus Christ or the American tall-tale hero, that he embodies the myth of the American Century, the Age of the American, or that he symbolizes the hegemony of American overreach and dominance. He is the quintessential American and the ugly American in the world of the right and the left.

Chinua Achebe

Modern African Literature Confronts the Constraints of the Global Politics of Reading

Contemporary writers do not inherit Chinua Achebe’s legacy as a neutral resource. They inherit it as a canon that has already been institutionalized, already been absorbed into systems of evaluation and circulation that reward familiarity. To write within this tradition is to encounter a set of formal and linguistic expectations that are both enabling and constraining.

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