Watching Rashomon in the Age of Disinformation
The flip side of Kurosawa’s great film, revealing a murder mystery to solve, is also a world in which the search for truth, however difficult or naïve, must never be abandoned.
Arts & Letters
Oh God, What Will the Dogsitter Think?
The dogsitter, it turns out, is not the least judgmental—at least, he does not wince or smirk, and he sounds happy to return in March. The dog adores him. Relieved on all counts, we write a check and say goodbye. Pandora’s box has been safely entered and exited.
Digging into the Murder of Gallerist Brent Sikkema
Despite a ripple of shock and pity, default response to any stranger’s brutal murder, Brent Sikkema still feels remote to me. Then I read Vik Muniz, one of Latin America’s most acclaimed artists, admitting, “I have spent more than 30 years trying to pointlessly emulate his juggling of fearlessness, kindness, and sophistication.”
In Memory of Writer Stanley Crawford
Stanley Crawford married RoseMary, an Australian journalist, on Crete; they moved to Ireland, where they had their first child, then returned to San Francisco in the late sixties. Things were so tumultuous there, he says, that when friends invited them to northern New Mexico for a visit, they stayed.
Lost at sea with Richard and Linda Thompson
Harmony Voyages is booking 200 paying guests for the August 2025 Richard Thompson cruise, whereas the Saipan transported nearly 3,000 paid sailors, Marines, and midshipmen like me, along with a squadron of fighting helicopters and big boats to take Marines ashore.
New Documentary on Werner Herzog Does One Thing Well
Herzog is not my “favorite” director, but I have followed his art and career with interest. Even as a fan it is sometimes hard to know if he is being brilliant in this, banal, or manipulative.
Learning How to Fall
Drunks and babies fall softly because they are not arrogant. The rest of us fall hard—in love, off the wagon, from glory—and fall so often, you would think we would learn how.
How Radiohead’s OK Computer Accelerates the Passing of Time
The fact that a composer such as Steve Hackman has folded Radiohead’s music into that of Brahms successfully enough to land in a performance hall is probably proof that time, alas, has at last caught up with Radiohead.
Putting Away the Holiday Season
I go my own way, but my kids are back to school or off on an internship now, and with that, the season is officially over for me, and all for the best. It is time to get up off the couch, work, walk, be ambitious, and take in the sun. To transition from a Christmas-stocking diet back to apples, Napa cabbage, lean proteins, and water.
Magazines: Lively, Smart, Radioactive, Dead
Jarvis tells that story with no glee. He loves the form as much as I do, and as he recounts the lively history of magazines, he finds the story of larger cultural shifts. The first magazines, he writes, were coffeehouses, curating—before the word came into vogue—the best writing, criticism, poetry, advice, and images. Even the word “magazine” was a French derivation from the Arabic word for storehouse. Those smooth pages collected and preserved treasures.