It promised to be such a fun evening. My book club, which read and adored Lessons in Chemistry, had decided to get together to watch the streaming version, a couple episodes at a time. “Can we wear pajamas?” one woman texted. “Absolutely.” The table was covered with Brie, spicy jam, crackers, bridge mix, […]
Christmas music resides along a spectrum wide enough to include light allegories about bullying a young reindeer (John David Mark’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” 1949) and masterpieces such as J.S. Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” (1734). Most of us would be hard-pressed to name Halloween music classics—although lists do exist, and there is […]
The “living dead” are neither living nor dead, but they possess incredible longevity in our culture. But have we ever stopped to consider what the zombie apocalypse genre has done for us, if not to us? Prophesying scenarios about the end of the world is not new. According to scholars, zombies are […]
Herbie Hancock tells a story about how he played a wrong chord once onstage with Miles Davis, King of Cool, in Stuttgart in 1963. It was a horror to Hancock; he put his hands on his ears, froze, and could not play another note for a full minute. Worse, he had already […]
We comfort ourselves that the dead live on in our memory. But there are so many beneath our feet that I have never heard of. Evi Liivak, for example. She is buried with her American husband and in-laws at Concordia Cemetery in south St. Louis. But she was famous as a European violinist—and […]
I thought I knew what Mozart’s music sounded like—until I heard how he meant it to sound. A Sunday afternoon. Thirty or so music lovers settle into seats at the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion, amid oil paintings and carved furniture of a bygone era. Precisely the sort of house concert Mozart gave. And today’s pianist, […]
Jann Wenner, co-founder and former editor of Rolling Stone, co-founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and one of the pillars of the pop culture criticism business, has succeeded in sabotaging his new book, The Masters, before it has even been widely reviewed. Wrecking the sales of one’s own […]
The people heading toward Arrowhead Stadium in the late afternoon of July 7th are not decked out in the red and gold garb of the local, prolifically successful football team, the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. Nor are they dressed in the merchandise of an opposition team; our only enemies are the […]
Patrick Bringley sat with his mother at his brother’s bedside. The sun was rising, and she looked down at her eldest, ridden with cancer, his pale face softened by the early light. Then she glanced over at Patrick. “Look at us,” she said wryly. “We’re a fucking old master painting.” She loved […]
It was May 16—had there been enough sun to warm the water? Someone saw the old man climb onto the old Daniel Boone Bridge railing—however did he manage it?—and leap into the Missouri River. As his body shot deeper, the chill and darkness would have enclosed him. Was he still conscious? Still glad […]