“Adventure” Means Something New These Days
The title of Christopher Schaberg’s latest book is the perfect oxymoron: a frisson of thrilling risk followed by a grim grown-up reminder of constraint.
Arts & Letters
Oscar Nominee The Taste of Things is Abundant with Passion
“The Taste of Things” has so many set-pieces of cooking that it feels like a dare to override the conventions of drama, which might seem to require that the meal get cooked, served, and eaten so the difficulties of relationship can be ennacted.
On Becoming a “Morning Person”
Once you get in the habit, you soon discover that 7 am simply will not do. The 8 am hour is the stuff of horror, and 9 am is for louts with the blood pressure of a year-old marshmallow. Only 5:30 or earlier will suffice, when the gray light of dawn verges on the cusp of its full spectrum.
Cartoonist Roz Chast Finds Herself in the Midwest
Chast was sweet and grateful but prone to trying something else. She insisted we go on, she would be fine in the chilly dark outside the massive locked building, which we ignored, no doubt to her discomfort.
A Screenwriter Cuts through the Bullshit
Paul Guyot decided he would write his own damned book. But first he would have to read all those books he thought absurd.
A Scarf Can Hold the Universe Together
Nette wrapped each scarf in tissue, tied it with a bow, and added a note with washing instructions. I doled out these packages with diffidence; they offered nothing cool, trendy, or stylish.
Time Shard Passages: Christopher Stark and 48 St. Stephen Premiere New Duet
Not only did 48 St. Stephen pull it off, but they paid Stark the consummate respect of performing their premiere immediately after such a powerful piece of music with so much historical weight. They also were maybe dropping a breadcrumb to mark a path.
Streaming Killed More Than Just Music
To find what you sought was an object earned. There was no “file” piped through the internet.
Time as the Spooky Thing
Even without tricks, time is spooky. Things move in its medium, are changed, disappear as if never formed. We acknowledge this uncanniness with a holiday at the end of the growing season devoted to ancient fears of death and magic.
When Childhood Trading Cards and History Lessons Collide
Art Spiegelman, the force behind both Wacky Packages and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus,” is that rare artist who knows great art may disregard the precision brush strokes of attempting “the masterpiece.”