May 2011 Archives
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Gallery
The Interiors of Art
These x-rays of ancient and contemporary artwork were created to serve as a tool for art historians and conservators, but their ethereal yet familiar silhouettes become something more in David Maisel’s photographs.
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Letters From Berlin
Krokodil des Kapitalismus
Seeking greater self-discipline and new adventures, our writer moves to Berlin to play tennis—the sport that’s equal parts therapy and sadism—and winds up on Nabokov’s old courts.
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Lunch Poems
Sugar Cube
There is a big difference between looking for something and simply looking, though travel can suit both pursuits.
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Personal Essays
Caught Telling Fiction
The gap between literary and historical fiction is mostly a marketing ploy—at least until a novelist meets a survivor of her story’s plot.
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Gallery
Cathedrals of Desire
Costco is cheap. Convenient, even, but should it be the subject of fine art? Here, the aisles of Home Depot and Target are the landscapes of the 21st century.
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New York, New York
From the Mixed-Up Files of the New York Public Library
As some Christians prepared for the Apocalypse, 500 questers spent Friday night locked inside the New York Public Library with game designer Jane McGonigal.
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The Meta Scene
An Open Letter to Writers of Open Letters
To those who feel compelled to address the world from Facebook, Twitter, and email chains, here is a message: No one is listening, least of all Luther Vandross.
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Guides
What Your Salute Says About You
How you start an email reveals a lot more about your intentions than you know. Common e-greetings for etiquette voodoo.
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Spoofs & Satire
Everyone Must Go
You’ve seen the billboards and the banner ads: Judgment Day is coming on May 21. But just because you’re saved doesn’t mean you’re home-free. Brimstone Barney’s Apocalypse Surplus has just the deal for you.
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Opinions
Mary Poppins Has a Tumblr
Children easily comprehend the web—almost as easily as new parents grasp fear. Exploring his computer’s “parental controls” for the first time, our writer tries to preserve his innocence a little longer.
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Gallery
My Pie Town
Imagine an America in which all-female families survived the Great Depression raising children and farming homesteads in the absence of men (and in the absence of today’s detractors to gay marriage.
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Profiles
Looking for Murder in His Eyes
A decade after Osama bin Laden’s face achieved iconic status, one writer still can’t help thinking, it’s a handsome one—this definitive “face of evil.”
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Profiles
Fanboy
As America dreams of black ops teams, where do mutants belong? And can comics end wars? From Captain America to big blond Thor, Osama bin Laden, and beyond.
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Gallery
In the Wilds
Nigel Peake’s new book is a lovely collection of drawings about farms, fields, and birds. It is pretty much irresistible, taken from childhood impressions and Peake’s current life in a one-road Irish village, where he is mistaken for the postman.
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Personal Essays
How the Dead Live
There’s a peculiar odor to burning hope—it’s the smell of exhaust fumes, human sweat, and a fast-food container interred under a seat cushion.
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Profiles
Americhrome
From Schwarzkopf’s boots to traffic cones, the federal government’s official color palette—yes, it has one—controls much of what we see. An investigation into how America elects to paint itself.
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Birnbaum v.
Andre Dubus III
Our man in Boston sits down with writer Andre Dubus III to discuss the differences between memoir and autobiography, Harvard and UMass students, and when it is inappropriate to send an email.
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Gallery
Beyond the Known
How is it we can know what Jupiter’s Great Red Spot looks like, or Saturn’s rings, or the dusty surface of Mars, though no human has every seen them in person? Michael Benson turns NASA’s data sets and grainy pictures into dazzling, saturated images of our solar system.