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…
Poor Megan McArdle! She can’t tell the truth even when she WANTS to!
It’s true! In a recent post, Having lost their flexibility, pro-lifers are losing their cause, poor Megan can’t help lying her ass off even when (apparently) she doesn’t want to! Let’s start with her headline: “Having lost their flexibility, pro-lifers are losing their cause”. What was the great rallying cry of the pro-life folks prior…
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”
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…
Donald Trump not a nice person, Clive Crook discovers.
No, he’s not. It took Clive awhile to figure it all out, but now it’s all coming into focus. Says Clive, a British chap who hangs his hat at Bloomberg after previous stints at the Economist and the Financial Times, The country should be terrified by this looming absurdity [a second term for Trump], as…