& we are talking about our
trip to LA and someone says
don’t go to Watts and someone
says it’s not Watts it’s the Mexicans
In the essay “Hallowe’en? Over Already?” (1999), Thomas Pynchon writes about some of the fall 1998 goings on at the Cathedral School in New York City, where his son, Jackson, was enrolled in the second grade.
Read MoreErik Stinson by Elias Tezapsidis Erik Stinson is a writer of short fiction and poetry, an essayist, web artist and associate copywriter. His most collection of stories, Tropic Midtown, came out on the 18th of April and is available here. The line of Stinson’s creative products are superblurry anyway and he finds unconventional ways to…
Read MoreFree Syrian Army soldier in Aleppo, Syria. Photograph courtesy of Voice of America. by Hilal Khashan The Syrian regime continues to celebrate its recent achievement in al-Qusayr, which it describes as a game-changing twist that will eventually awe the opposition into submission. Officials in Damascus wasted no time in announcing the beginning of the Northern…
Read MoreHaze in Kuala Lumpur. Photograph by Servus From London Review of Books: The question of how to prevent climate change – we’re way past that point now – has morphed into the question of how to slow it down. There’s no shortage of theoretical answers about the best way to pump fewer greenhouse gases into…
Read MoreLyle Talbot as Lex Luthor, Atom Man vs. Superman, Columbia Pictures, 1950 Margaret Talbot reads a passage from her book The Entertainer, about her Hollywood actor father Lyle Talbot. Via KQED
Read MoreOn the Pauper’s Bench, Francois Bonvin, 1864 by Dawn Holland and Jonathan Portes EU governments have individually embraced severe austerity programmes in an effort to avoid becoming the next Portugal. This column presents results from the National Institute Global Econometric Model suggesting that these individually rational polices are leading to collective folly. Keynes’ ‘paradox of…
Read More“Escape Clause”, The Twilight Zone, CBS, November 6, 1959 by Christopher Cappelluti Reason dictates that the devil does not exist. As sophisticated 21st century people agree, it is absurd to put stock in the magical power of trinkets, ritualistic dances and incantations. While evil is apparent in the world — war, genocide, prejudice, hatred — few…
Read More12 March 1933 My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking—with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell…
Read MorePaul Auster reads from his memoir, Winter Journal. Via
Read MorePoster for Sofie Peeters’ documentary Femme de la rue by Markha Valenta When Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, “the problem that has no name” was the problem of college-educated housewives sitting at home being bored to death. Today, the “problem that has no name” is more widespread, more alluring and more aggressive.…
Read MoreNorthern New Mexico. Photography by Gord McKenna John Brandon reads a passage from his latest novel, A Million Heavens, set in New Mexico. Via KQED About the Author: John Brandon is a writer from the Gulf Coast of Florida. A Million Heavens is his third novel.
Read MoreNew York Stock Exchange. Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty Images by Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein As ProPublica has been detailing for two years, Wall Street banks and the hedge fund Magnetar worked together to build mortgage-backed deals that the hedge fund also bet against. The more than $40 billion of deals helped fuel the crash of…
Read MoreAbout the Author: Jill Lepore is a writer and professor of American history at Harvard University and chair of Harvard’s History and Literature Program.
Read MoreFrom New Left Review: Why has the Eurozone emerged as the new epicentre of the global financial crisis, when its origins—the famous subprime mortgages—were American? And why, within Europe, has Greece proved to be the weak link? The starting point for any adequate answer is the recognition that what we have been experiencing for the…
Read MorePostcard of Wimbourne, Dorset, c.1930 From The Glass Half Empty: This is intended to be a conservation book with a difference. While most others concentrate on the gloom and doom, my aim is to explore the glimmers of good news. ere is no doubt that nature is in grave trouble and that time is fast…
Read MoreSapphire, whose first novel Push was adapted into the Oscar-winning film Precious, reads from The Kid, a sequel that follows the life of Precious’ son. Via KQED About the Author: Sapphire is a writer who lives in New York City. From 1983 to 1993 she lived in Harlem, where she taught reading and writing to…
Read Moreby Rachel O’Dwyer and Linda Doyle Introduction In The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society is Coming Online, editor of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly (2009) argues that the collaborative cultures emerging around web 2.0 platforms cultivate a “digital socialism”, with broad political and economic implications for the producers of online culture. Kelly, alongside others, sees the…
Read MoreJoan Frank reads a passage from her new novel Make It Stay, set in a post-catastrophe California. Via KQED About the Author: Joan Frank is a writer, novelist and a reviewer of literary fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review. She lives in Northern California.
Read More
