Why Lessons in Chemistry Reduced Me to Tears
Some griefs, like my overreaction to “Lessons in Chemistry,” overlap with our own past hurts.
Arts & Letters
Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” Is the Best Halloween Song You Have Never Heard
“The Mercy Seat” is a five-minute tour of a death-row inmate’s dirge and final thoughts before death by electric chair pits an ancient Old Testament object against New Testament teachings, turns everyday objects into hallucinations, and laughs at the idea of knowing truth from falsehood, or justice from mercy, when faced with death.
Not-So-Random Acts of Kindness
Shepherd’s Centers is a network of fifty-seven affiliate chapters across the country that offers some 165,000 people “services such as transportation, handy helpers, friendly visits, grocery shopping, and respite care to help older adults remain living in their own homes and communities.”
On Losing One’s Letters and One’s Mind
These are tiny disturbances of the domestic sphere, brief incursions of chaos. They remind me of the finite limits of our budget, my patience, and my life span.
What Do Women Want? Ask Colleen Hoover
The success of Hoover’s books reminds me how prissy and bourgeois I am. Hoover’s fans say her work leaves them speechless, in tears, happy wrecks.
Evil Finds Horror in the Everyday—Then Laughs at It
The show’s first stroke of genius is the team’s camaraderie. In a time when we dare not even hint at our beliefs to a stranger, “Evil” gives us three people with entirely different world views who—here is the miracle—respect one another’s points of view.
Why Dawn of the Dead is the Seventies’ Ultimate Coming-of-Age Movie
“Dawn of the Dead” turns life and death upside down. Life is a stress-soaked struggle to survive, while death is a lurching, subconscious walk through old, submerged impulses until you die again—by firearm, machete, or blunt force. And why do people refuse to die? Because they want to go shopping.
How a Millais Painting Wages Elegant Battle against Climate Change
A painting cannot give us back days of fall lost. But if we gaze at a painting capable of imparting its own unique sensations, we can at least travel to a different place of mind, a consciousness that might move us forward or even shake us to action.
Miles Davis Showed Us How Taking Risks Was Cool
It takes self-assurance to throw yourself or your plans away in the belief there is no wrong path, only other opportunities to exercise mastery. It is not a game without risk.
Why the Clothes of My Past Stay Closeted
The idea of resurrecting clothes of my youth half a century later, redeeming the hot sting of embarrassment with carefully chosen accessories, intrigued me. Until I remembered what I would be resurrecting.