Many works of art have emerged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as part of the collective struggle to commemorate, understand, and situate them within the rapidly coalescing frieze of our shared memory. Thanks to the plethora of novels sprung up in the ashes of disaster, we are now privy to such worthwhile phenomena of universal human interest as the tone-poetic hi-jinks of the chattering classes in the months preceding the big event, as in Claire Messud’s respectable novel The Emperor’s Children, and the annoyingly precious musings of the insufferably earnest, as in Jonathan Safran Foer’s not-so-respectable novella Extremely Loud and Incredible Close.
Something’s rotten on Sesame Street. The particular putrefaction of which I write is not one borne of organic decay; rather, it arises from a constellation of things which would seem prima facie to signify otherwise: rosy-cheeked health, hygienic propriety, balanced-meals, … Read More
Inevitably and with curious necessity, the recitation of trivia turns to the subject of death-counts. This is because the death-count is the ne plus ultra of trivia: “how many people died there.”
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.” -Walter Benjamin Nobody can accuse Jack Bauer of not having done enough for his country. He has killed more people than polio and saved more lives than Jonas Salk. … Read More
The Morning After Virginia said she would make the breakfast herself. For it was a beautiful London morning in June. She kicked back the covers and looked at Cady Stanton’s luscious ass. Smelled faintly of honeysuckle. Or was that patchouli? … Read More
I. “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde” at the Met Investing Vollard with the almost statesmanlike title, “Patron of the Avant-Garde” is pretty generous for someone Paul Gauguin once called “the worst kind of crocodile.” Maecenas he … Read More
1. “Picasso and American Art” (through Jan. 28, 2007) at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Picasso was the greatest artist of the 20th century. Or so I contend. One measure of his greatness, currently on display at the Whitney’s … Read More
“Killing the Angel in the House,” wrote Virginia Woolf, “is part of the occupation of a woman writer.” This particular epithet had come to encapsulate the Victorian stereotype of sexual frigidity, otherworldly purity, and picture-perfect domesticity which was the ego-ideal for a century of unhappy women. Joyce Carol Oates has taken Woolf’s literary dictum to the next level: her Angels are not themselves killed; they themselves kill.
It’s like one of those Twilight Zone epiphanies that arrives midway through an episode to thwart the lately begotten hopes and dreams of whatever poor fool thought he caught a lucky break or maybe had a good thing going. So … Read More
“Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe,” plead Shylock to the barrister, and indeed what characterizes Jewish history in the main is calamity and tribulation of a scope and cruelty so reckless and undreamt they seem enjoined from another … Read More