Arts & Letters Archives - Page 34 of 39

Leonardo Padura, the Great Cuban Detective Novel, and a Passion for Baseball

Padura has won more than two dozen international awards, the last, the Princess of Asturias prize. On that occasion, he wore a Cuban guayabera and held a baseball when he went up to the podium. First loves never die.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Miles Davis, Style Beyond Style

By Gerald Early

Miles Davis no longer belongs to his family. He belongs to the world and the family has no say in how the world wishes to treat him, how each new generation decides it wishes to understand him. This little speech had no effect. I was naïve to think it would.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

The Day of the Dead Stamps—and Their Backstory

By Jeannette Cooperman

The stamps do not lie: Their colors pop out of a solemn black background, and the skulls evoke grief, death, and decomposition as surely as poor Yorick’s skull did for Hamlet. But there is no sense of alas, no horror or repulsion. These are sugar skulls, delightful to take into ourselves.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches

Touchstone Texts: American Argument

By Gerald Early

American Argument provides historical depth in our consideration of how Blacks and Whites came together to enact the ritual of conversing across racial lines in the hope of better understanding each other. But it is remarkable how well it still speaks to us today, as aspects of that conversation have not changed.

Touchstone Texts | Reviews

Why Nobody Knows Moholy-Nagy’s Name

By Jeannette Cooperman

Moholy-Nagy had never gone to art school, and he had never taught. He had an almost childlike interest in anything new, especially the machines that were transforming industry.

Arts & Letters | Dispatches