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.
Arts & Letters
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.
Do I Hate the Modern or Just What It Fails to Represent?
Finally, I confess...and realize what I have been missing.
How Roy Ayers Put Soul on “Nice”
Roy Ayers coasted on his unique sentiment and vibe. It was sublime, positive, and unfailingly warm and luminescent. What else would you expect a writer, any writer, to say about the musical talent who gave us the song “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”?
How Zelensky Might Channel Thucydides
It is anyone’s guess as to whether Ukrainian President Volodoymyr Zelensky has read ‘The History of the the Peloponnesian War,’ even if his words spill into realms that Thucydides, with his imperatives for the preservation of law and solidarity against violence and calamity, would recognize at once.
Most Points Wins
The goal is to make you feel slightly more virtuous, briefly. But why stop there? People are crazy, and times are strange.
I Hate Nazis. Why Does Facebook Want Me to See Them So Badly?
Facebook’s algorithms, which drive what any of us see individually, are a mystery to most of us. At best they make us passive consumers; at worst, easy pupils to brain-train for nefarious ends.
The Universal, Demarcating Power of The Scream
By drawing a line between its disturbed central figure and the serenity of the two bystanders at the vanishing point of the painting’s perspective, The Scream asks us to question the “sanity” we pretend to hold on to.
Music Not Missiles: Memories of a Reluctant Cold Warrior
The guys in Gaza must be nearing 60 like my bandmates and I. I wonder if they stayed in our country after they were free to return to theirs without booking a steady gig in a gulag. I wonder what they make of Vladimir Putin having an ally in the White House or a short-timer like Pete Hegseth having oversight of the mightiest military on Earth.