Articles Written By Robert Birnbaum
Robert Birnbaum is editor-at-large at Identity Theory. All the sketchy details of his life will be (re)fabricated in his memoir-in-progress, Just Talking: How to Do Things With Words. His weblog can be found here.
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Steer Toward Rock
Fae Myanne Ng, who was last heard from in 1994 with her novel Bone—short stories in smart magazines like Harper’s excepted—sets her new story in ‘60s San Francisco,...
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Standing Up to the Madness
If ever a paean to grassroots activism were needed, this would seem to be a time. As Bill Moyers expresses: Amy Goodman doesn’t practice trickle-down journalism. She goes where...
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The Last Lecture
One of America’s lesser-attended afflictions is an appetite for advice and counsel from anyone adopting the mien and attitude of expertise. Which of course makes for a steady stream...
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Our Secret Discipline
Modern poetic titan William Butler Yeats no doubt deserves scholarly analysis and exegesis; based on Helen Vendler’s stature and reputation at Harvard, her study of Yeats’s techniques and...
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Renewing America’s Food Traditions
In case it has escaped you, there are foodstuffs that are endangered by the toxicity of post-industrialism. In any case, among other contributions of this book are a list of...
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The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
Walter Benjamin’s most famous essay is anthologized here (version two of four) along with 40 or so other ruminations on media, some well known, others obscure, and some presented in...
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The Age of Reagan
Sean Wilentz, who has among other things weighed in on the Bush presidency’s place in history, offers up a clear-headed historian’s assessment—or should I say reassessment—of...
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The Power of the Zoot
Odd attire exhibited by youth—tattoos, piercings, and buttock-cleavage trousers—are nothing new. Think tie-dye, sandals, and Native American jewelry, or jeans, T-shirts, and leather jackets with pointy shoes. What...
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Strange Bedfellows
It is about time a serious scholar, in this case University of Iowa American Studies mentor and former nightclub comic Russell Peterson, examines this rise in attention and credibility attributed...
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Havanas in Camelot
Here is a posthumous collection of 14 of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Styron’s (Sophie’s Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner) essays: The title piece treats his relationship with John...
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Everything Is Cinema
I dimly remember seeing Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend on a twin bill with a Laurel and Hardy short—I think Nixon was president—and I suspect there was a kind...
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Drawing Words and Writing Pictures
Much-heralded artist Jessica Abel and husband Matt Madden assemble a 15-lesson curriculum for creating comics (or if you will, graphic novels). She is a busy bee, also releasing two other...