by Joe Linker I knew about The Tribes of Palos Verdes (St. Martin’s Press, 1997) when it first came out, and I was interested in reading it for what appeared to be its local surf setting. We used to go snorkel diving in the coves around Palos Verdes, the small peninsula that gives Los Angeles’s…
Read Moreby Joe Linker I went outside to grab this morning’s paper and the air smelled and felt like the ocean, warm but a bit wet, a “marine layer,” the weather folks call it, and I was reminded of early June mornings in the South Bay, getting up to “go surfing,” and thought I’d pull some…
Read MoreTristan Garcia by Graham Harman The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet,1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness…
Read MoreCartagena, Colombia. Photograph by Fernando Zuleta by Gregory Jusdanis Literature seems to be everywhere in Cartagena and not just because Gabriel García Márquez still has a house there. I was prepared to find a literary city as I had recently read Ilan Stavans’ biography of García Márquez. But as I rambled through the jewel of…
Read MoreRachel Evan Wood as Sophie-Anne Leclerq, True Blood, HBO by Caroline Walters Zombies, Vampires, And Philosophy: New Life for the Undead, by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, ReadHowYouWant, 500 pp. This book seems to tap into the trend that vampires are pervading contemporary popular culture: Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma…
Read MoreJosiah Ober Josiah Ober is a classicist and political theorist at Stanford University, and his work on ancient Greek democracy is widely read in both disciplines. The Art of Theory recently spoke with him about Athens, democracy, and fly-fishing. The Art of Theory What prompted your interest in classics? Josiah Ober I attended a troubled,…
Read MoreThe County Election, George Caleb Bingham, 1851 by Ash Amin If democracy means rule by the people for the people, it has broken down. At pivotal moments in the past, altering the rules of the political has been a defining trait of the organised left, able to project a new social order out of latent…
Read Moreby Bill Benzon I’ve just been watching Dumbo. I suppose it’s been over thirty years since I last saw it, or some part of it, so my expectations were most strongly influenced by what I’ve read in the last year or two. I was primed for the “Baby Mine” and “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequences.…
Read MoreKing Louis Napoléon by Lotte Jensen To what extent can literature be used as a source for gaining historical knowledge?[1] This question has challenged historians and literary historians ever since the development of ‘history’ as a scholarly discipline. The answer tends to be moderately positive: literature may reveal specific information that can increase our historical…
Read MoreSandro Girgvliani by Irakli Zurab Kakabadze It is already 20 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union. We were the generation who was filled with hope in 1989, who expected great transformation of the world after the demise of the totalitarian state. We expected so much. This generation rebelled against domination and violence in…
Read MorePlate 37 [41] from Jerusalem, William Blake, 1804-1820 by Jeroen Mettes Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. “Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006).” In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek. Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois. —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not…
Read MoreParis Commune, 1871 by Jonathan Moses Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, by David Harvey, Verso, 206 pp. It would be impossible to cover here the range of ideas in Harvey’s recent book, Rebel Cities, but it is worth considering one of its key themes: how might the city,…
Read Moreby Andrew Goldstone What are the eras of publishing history? Are they literary eras? I’d like to expand on our discussion of John Thompson’s sociology of contemporary publishing by posing some literary-historical questions. In his post on Thompson, Lee Konstantinou framed some questions about contemporary book publication and promotion which Merchants of Culture can help…
Read Moreby J. Bradford DeLong and Barry Eichengreen Charles Kindleberger’s classic book on the Great Depression was originally published 40 years ago. In the preface to a new edition, two leading economists argue that the lessons are as relevant as ever. The parallels between Europe in the 1930s and Europe today are stark, striking, and increasingly…
Read MoreFrom The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1935 edition. Illustration by Norman Rockwell by Joe Linker Writing strategy textbooks often move us quickly through the rhetorical modes before introducing argument, where we are invited to pick a topic of interest, something we’re passionate about, but then are asked…
Read Moreby Cecile Alduy “FRANCE HAS A NEW PRESIDENT.” It does not look like much of a statement on paper, or on a computer screen: five little words, almost too short for a tweet. But France today is still dazed from the news, floating between disbelief, relief and exhaustion. I was in Paris on May 6th.…
Read MoreWladimir Klitschko and Jean-Marc Mormeck in the WBA-IBF Heavyweight titles, Düsseldorf, March 2012 by Àngel Ferrero In the amorality of capitalism, the alternatives for an emigrant are virtually reduced to cynicism or melancholy. Cigarette smoke snuck into clothes and wreathed tables, chairs, and walls of the bar in Neukölln, Berlin’s old working-class neighbourhood, now home…
Read Moreby Travis White-Schwoch and David N. Rapp Reading Watchmen: A cognitive perspective In the opening sequence of Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-1987), a disheveled man wanders the streets of New York, carrying a sign warning of the end of the world. He steps through puddles on the sidewalk, while a blood-stained smiley…
Read Moreby Feliz Molina A word about the quotation marks. People ask about them, in the beginning; in the process of giving themselves up to reading the poem, they become comfortable with them, without necessarily thinking precisely about why they’re there. But they’re there, mostly to measure the poem. The phrases they enclose are poetic feet.…
Read MoreFrom The Hunger Games, Lionsgate, 2012 by James Warner Battle Royale and The Hunger Games are young adult novels in which governments force teenagers to kill each other. Comparing these books to classic works by William Golding and Robert Sheckley suggests that, while becoming more skeptical about governments, we’ve become more trusting about our own…
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