Fuck yeah, I do! So many questions! Like, why the fuck did producer/director/star Bradley Cooper even make this movie? Did he wake up one morning and think to himself “You know what America needs to hear? It needs to hear how legendary composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, having lost his way in life, ultimately found spiritual redemption…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Income inequality, muddle or myth? Or just plain irrelevant?
Brad DeLong, the grasping hands guy, with whom I have previously tussled on a number of occasions, recently ran a piece, Is America Today Really No More Unequal Economic Class-Wise than It Was in 1960?, attempting to sort out recent claims regarding prior claims regarding an alleged increase in economic inequality in the world today….
Siskel & Ebert, together again
The no-doubt-aging fans of the once legendary film criticism tag-team duo of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert have been done a solid by Matt Singer’s excellent study of their partnership, Opposable Thumbs, though I must say that the very best thing about Matt’s book is that inspired me to read Roger Ebert’s remarkable memoir, Life…
Socio-political notes from all over: The Ivies go down, Haas keeps covering aass, and Ryan Grim covers, and covers up for, “The Squad”.
The Ivies took a pounding, and New York Representative Elise Stefanik received a publicity boost more valuable than gold, and it couldn’t have come to a less deserving person.1 The supposedly brilliant scholars heading Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and M.I.T. came across as scripted robots, not responding actively to Stefanik’s leading questions—that “intifada”, which…
Austin Patty—Metrical Dissonance in Monk’s “Played Twice”
Have you ever wondered—really wondered—about metrical dissonance in “Played Twice”? Okay, it’s my guess that this video is definitely not for everyone, but it gives you an example of how detailed discussions of Monk’s music can get. Posted by Austin Patty
Sandra Day O’Connor, the justice who made Bush v. Gore happen
It’s a bit of a tradition here at Literature R Us to speak ill of the dead, and the newly deceased Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will form no exception to that rule. Sandra was one of the “Infamous Five” who formed the corrupt majority of the infamous case of Bush v. Gore, which…
My Henry Kissinger Story
Whenever someone seriously important dies, there is a rush by everyone with even the slightest connection to the deceased to file a “My [Insert VIP Name Here] story”. I usually get a hearty snicker, or even a sneer, out of these, because the hapless hanger-on/spiritual remora involved almost invariably inflates an utterly trivial encounter into…
Louis Menand thinks you can’t handle the truth—about Charlie Chaplin
If you have not read Louis Menand’s massive, 857-page study of the arts in America from 1945 to 1965, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, you are missing, not an intellectual treat but an intellectual feast of the highest order. A more accurate title might be New York in the Fifties,…
Mats Öljare—“Played Twice”
Posted by Mats, aka “Adolf Hedgehog”
Israel versus Palestine: When Dreams Collide
“What a dreary compromise is life!” exclaimed the hero of Norman Mailer’s abortive magnum opus, The Man Who Studied Yoga.1 And so life is a dreary compromise for most of us, which is why we go to films to see people who do all the things we don’t do in real life, like punch out…