The Spanish I Lost in Translation
La persona, a person, is feminine even if referring to a man. El vestido, the dress, is masculine, though la falda, the skirt, is feminine. Why do this to us?
Arts & Letters
Photographer Joel Meyerowitz Sums the Decades
Joel Meyerowitz gives a sort of history of America from mid-century to post-9-11. He frames this, as he sits speaking to the camera, with his own experiences on “the street,” illustrated by film footage (it is unclear if it is his) and stills that he shot.
Bleak House v. Trump
As our national landscape becomes consumed and reshaped by hundreds of lawsuits, appeals, and judgements, Dickens’s ’Bleak House‘ reminds us of the grotesqueries that will be born as a result, but also of the life that survives and waits for us all outside the courtroom.
Platform Offers Documentaries on Photographers, Such as Josef Koudelka
In the 2019 documentary ‘Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land,’ directed by Gilad Baram we get to see a photographer with the perfectionism of a master and the patience of a saint. Koudelka has lived a life of discomfort and often danger for his art.
The Rage over “Adolescence”
What disgusted a handful of people about one of the best recent shows on television—and what that reveals about us
Documentary on Artist Art Spiegelman Worth a Watch
There is much of interest in the documentary “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” about technique, layout, framing, visual style, and the burden of guilt in storytelling, because these things cannot do enough.
Why Pamela Paul Annoyed NYTimes Readers
We are both White ladies who want everybody to be polite and nice so we can go back to reading our book.
The Nominal Joys of a Discombobulated Text
‘Tristram Shandy’ and ‘Riddley Walker’ stand as scurrilous hold-outs, novels that experiment with form, juggle your expectations, and even jangle your nerves.
Remembering R.E.M. Explored by SLSO on Its One-Year Anniversary
Though St. Louis cannot claim the April 5 debut of “R.E.M. Explored” as the church in Athens can for the band itself, this performance featured a new sequence of the program that has become standard in subsequent concerts, not to mention the only time Mills’s compositions have been re-imagined by Marsh and Mallamud’s orchestrations and performed by a symphony orchestra on the iconic date of R.E.M.’s nativity.
Looking Hip in the Gaza Strip? My Useless Act of Indie-Rock Prophecy
Before the president of the United States publicly imagined the Gaza Strip as a hip Middle Eastern Riviera, I only ever told this story to mock myself at parties. It was one of my bits. It turns out I am a prophet, I would declare.