June 2009 Archives
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The Novice
How to Hunt
Those who can’t do, learn. In this installment of our series in which the clueless apprentice with the experts, we get licensed, wake up very early, and track turkeys in the woods.
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Gallery
Black Patches
Through collecting and many Freedom of Information requests, Trevor Paglen assembles a full sash of secret military badges, and they make for a fun tour through some vaguely unsettling regalia.
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Bookbag
Street Fighting Men
I actually lived through and participated in the era unimaginatively referred to as the Sixties--there was war and drugs and madness and dancing in the streets, assassinations and a presidential...
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Current Reads
Lost and Found
I first became aware of Uruguayan writer, activist, and dog lover Eduardo Galeano about 20 years ago through Lawrence Weschler's investigations of the amnesty movements in Brazil and Argentina during their...
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Op-Ed
Look at This Fucking Hipster Basher
Never mind news articles that link economic woes to a culture shift, the report of the hipster’s death is an exaggeration.
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The Non-Expert
Letters to a Young Philanderer
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we channel our inner Governor Sanford to explain the ways of windbags nationwide.
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Personal Essays
Breakfast With the Beeb
Sounds can take us home—even when that home belongs to someone else, and the sounds are of obscure gardening comedy.
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Bookbag
An Illustrated History
Add the names of Bill Mauldin and Jules Feiffer to Ed Sorel, Seymour Chwast, and David Levine, and this group of masters will give you a Mount Rushmore of American...
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Interview
Ryan Catbird
Back in the formative days of the mp3-blog world, Ryan Catbird was king with The Catbirdseat. Since then he’s started his own label (Catbird Records, with a slew...
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Announcements
What Are Your Favorite Worst Movies?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Road House is no Citizen Kane (though some may argue it's a poor man's Casablanca), but we both know which one you're going...
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Gallery
Once the World’s Fair
Once upon a time you needed to visit the latest World’s Fair to see what was new—and the structures and relics of those events still live among us, even if they’re treated like so many architectural burger wrappers.
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Current Reads
Lyrical Odyssey
Canadian poet and occasional novelist Anne Michaels, whose first novel, Fugitive Pieces, was internationally lauded and awarded, returns some 12 years later with a sophomore effort every bit as engaging. The...
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The Spider and the Fly
The Initiation
Of the free games included with Windows, none is more treacherous than Spider Solitaire. In the latest installment, the master assesses the first hand.
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Back Matter
Queen Jane Approximately
Accepting writing as one’s profession allows one to indulge all manner of aberrant and/or unorthodox behavior (sometimes to or with other writers). Along with the expected impecuniosities, the...
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Spoofs & Satire
Read My Body Language
When you fold your arms or cross your legs, you unconsciously send a message that reveals your true thoughts. How to read my physical cues.
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Gallery
The Notion of Family
LaToya Ruby Frazier may be right that there is dysfunction in every home, but not every tense mother-daughter relationship receives such meditative and artistic consideration.
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The Non-Expert
The Pride of the Bernard-Barnards of West Wickingham Is Wounded
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we receive a letter from a student in distress and do absolutely nothing to assist her.
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Current Reads
South Beach, Not Hamptons
There was a time in the 1990s when turning to the New York Observer offered amusing and enlightening relief from the prevalence of so-called service journalism in the form of...
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Deadwood on the Hudson
Murderer, Thief, Whoremonger, Cheat
This summer marks the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s joyride to Albany—a celebration steeped in blood and greed.
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Interview
Tom Piazza
Author Tom Piazza’s latest novel, City of Refuge, was runner-up in this year’s Tournament of Books. As a music writer, he won a Grammy for his album notes...
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Confab
Julia Alvarez
In the last decade of the 20th century, Vanity Fair—in what no doubt was a well-intended nod to the rising tide of Spanish-language and Latino literature—fabricated “Las Girlfriends,”...
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Bookbag
New Books About Cuba
You know a good chunk of time has passed when what was once viewed as aberrant achieves trend status and becomes simply idiosyncratic. For much of my life I have...
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New York, New York
A Terrifically Bad Idea
The plan: 10 cafés, 10 macchiatos, one morning, by bike. Embarking on an adventure that can be described in only one way.
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Gallery
Sites of Impact
Stan Gaz brings together 85 gorgeous portraits of “impact sites”—pockmarks on the Earth marking where the planet’s been struck by meteorite fragments.
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Current Reads
Life Before Death
David Foster Wallace’s suicide last autumn sent shockwaves through the literary world unleashing a torrent of verbiage, opinionizing, and hand wringing—it seemed as if anyone who ever read...
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The Non-Expert
I’ll Tell You No Lies
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we guide a reader who peppers her friends with questions, but finds they won’t reciprocate her curiosity.
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The New Pantheon
Elmore Leonard
Octogenarian writer Elmore (“Dutch”) Leonard has published more than 40 books, mostly novels, and about half of which have been made into movies—none more credibly executed then Steven Soderbergh’s...
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Genre Genre Genre
J-Noir
Crime story writer Michael Connelly’s latest offering brings back cop beat reporter Jack McEvoy from what I consider the finest of his 20 novels, The Poet, a standalone story that...
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Writing About Writers
Price Is Right
Considering the marginal contribution literary fiction makes to the commercial publishing engine’s so-called bottom line, I am ever astounded so many literary biographies, writers’ memoirs, and authors’ correspondences are...
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Interview
WNYC’s John Schaefer
A native of New York City, John Schaefer has been a WNYC radio host and music curator for more than 25 years. His long-running show “New Sounds” explores a diverse galaxy...
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Personal Essays
Breakfast, Lunch, and Winners
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has been picked to lead the war in Afghanistan, and on only one meal a day. One week spent in the general’s reduced-calorie footsteps.
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Current Reads
Impact
An April 1999 event at a Colorado high school should have changed the way Americans view childhood and child rearing. It did for me. As the parent of a young boy...
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Spoofs & Satire
The Cougar Who Would Be Queen
Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor has been called a bigot and a racist—and that’s just week one. A memo to Republican politicians outlining the next phase of attack.
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Gallery
Blind Prom
These photos from the prom for the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired trigger one of those reality-check moments for sighted audiences—of course visually impaired students go to the prom, and you’ll recognize your own prom night in these celebratory pictures.