July 2011

Political extremism is one of the most pernicious, destructive and nihilistic forms of human expression...

From Barnes and Noble Review: “All money represents theft,” wrote the yippie guru Jerry Rubin. “Shoplifting gets you high. Don’t buy. Steal. If you act like it’s yours, no one will ask you to pay for it.” Like Abbie Hoffman, whose Steal This Book! argued that it was immoral...

From N+1: In a ceremony on June 10, Mike Tyson’s Hall of Fame photo and plaque were unveiled. The lead-up to this event—along with a new reality show about Tyson’s intriguing passion for pigeon fancying—has brought him back into the media spotlight. Tyson was the last great popular champion...

Learning to read Ulysses means tracing a path through its strangeness...

China’s Other Revolution | by Edward S. Steinfeld

Boston Review

Ai may be the most recognizable name globally, but other detainees have included rights activists, lawyers, bloggers, journalists, and academics. Some have been formally charged with “creating a disturbance” or “inciting...

by Teju Cole I am at work on a book about Lagos, a non-fictional narrative. Why Lagos? It is the biggest city in Africa, and the fastest growing in the world. And it was my home for seventeen years, from infancy until I finished high-school. But the most important...

Bosun Bird at anchor at the foot of Monte Darwin, in the Northwest Arm of the Beagle Channel by Nicholas Coghlan It was the late seventies and I had just graduated from University in Britain. The economy was depressed, the country was strike-bound and rainy. On the spur of the moment...

by Gregory Jusdanis The world is text. Mallarmé and Flaubert described this possibility at the end of the nineteenth century and Derrida proclaimed it again more recently. But now we can say that the world is literature. It is turning literary through the Internet. What is taking place today...