Byline: Hal Parker

Strange Bedfellows

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

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Don’t Look Now

A few years ago the song “Fortunate Son” was used in a commercial for Wrangler Jeans. To many this seemed yet another belated obituary for the 60’s, yet another testament to the casual victory of the Establishment. After all, here … Read More

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The Emperor’s New Museum

The utilitarian function of the museum as mere container has long been eclipsed by its function as signifying apparatus. On the one hand, the design of the interior is responsible for the terms of encounter with individual works of art. On the other hand, the shape of the exterior mediates and proclaims a role for art within the surrounding architectural landscape, cultural mise-en-scène, and even historical moment.

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Let Them Eat Cookie

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

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Trivial Pursuits

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.”

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Polymorphously Hilarious

“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” -Jesus, Matthew 18:8 “Your right eye is half-a-millimeter too high,” Dr. Christian Troy informs an aspiring model during the pilot-episode of Nip/Tuck. “And you have an Irish nose,” he quickly adds as … Read More

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All the Pretty Corpses

Cormac McCarthy has established himself as one of the great American authors of the 20th century. His magnificent Border Trilogy, comprised of All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities on the Plain, told the hardscrabble yet ethereal tale of … Read More

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The Polygamist Next Door

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

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Carrying the Fire

Every now and then there comes a book which is like an arrow shot into the heart of things because it has the power to redeem the fading, diffuse enterprise of bookselling and novel-gazing both, all the misbegotten hours spent … Read More

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Clean, Well-Lighted Places

It’s fitting that the two floors housing the exhibitions “Picasso and American Art” (reviewed in the issue of October 12) and “Edward Hopper: Highlights from the Collection” are adjacent. These shows typify two different trends of 20th century American art … Read More

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The Perfect Medium

Photographs are unquestionably deemed to be accurate representations of the real; whereas a painting is inherently considered to be a fictive interpretation of its subject, a photograph simply reports its subject as it is. Or does it? How is this … Read More

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The Vagina Homicides

“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.

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