Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention was a love letter to her husband, for his accomplishments both as a president and a family man. “Today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are—it reveals who you are,” she said.
Читать дальше...
Writing about Joni Mitchell is difficult. The first and clearest fact about her is that she recorded eight genius records in a row in the late 1960s and 1970s: Song to a Seagull (1968), Clouds (1969), Ladies of the Canyon (1970), Blue (1971), For the Roses, (1972), Court and Spark (1974), The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975), and Hejira (1976). This is the Joni Mitchell whom David Crosby saw play in the Gaslight South in 1967: “She was singing ‘Michael from Mountains’ or ‘Both Sides, Now’ or some other fucking wonderful song... Читать дальше...
There are no trenches, no German submarines, no gas attacks in Blood Dark, yet Louis Guilloux’s epic novel ranks among the most powerful French depictions of the First World War. By 1935, when it was published, suffering on the front line had already produced a series of classics: Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire and Maurice Genevoix’s ’Neath Verdun (1916); Blaise Cendrars’s I’ve Killed (1918); Roland Dorgelès’s Wooden Crosses (1919). Guilloux’s contribution was different. As an adolescent in provincial Brittany... Читать дальше...
On Thursday night in Richmond, Virginia, his first day back on the campaign trail since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Barack Obama will give a stump speech for the state’s Democratic nominee for governor, Ralph Northam. The former president will inject himself into a race The Washington Post called “the country’s marquee statewide election this year,” a critical swing-state test for his party and the Trump resistance. Polls are tightening; Democrats are nervous. But with three weeks until the election... Читать дальше...
Illustration by Meghan Willis
Sam Fox, Pamela Adlon’s television alter ego on FX’s Better Things, is not like a regular mom. She’s a cool mom. You know this because she dresses like Patti Smith, all steel-toed ranch boots and distressed canvas blazers, with a smudge of kohl around her eyes. She sometimes calls her three daughters “dude.” One night, after a Joe Walsh concert, she comforts her 16-year-old daughter’s friend, who has had a run-in with an ex-boyfriend. “If it is any consolation,” she counsels... Читать дальше...
THE SHADOW IN THE GARDEN: A BIOGRAPHER’S TALE By James Atlas Pantheon, 400 pp., $28.95
In 1987, Saul Bellow gave an interview about the controversial book The Closing of the American Mind by his friend Allan Bloom. During the conversation, Bellow delivered a now-infamous line that was widely read as a flippant profession of cultural imperialism: “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus, the Proust of the Papuans?” It became exhibit A in the case against Bellow, who had seemed to disregard to cultural... Читать дальше...
It’s hard to accurately characterize President Donald Trump’s habit of making consistently false, frequently self-contradictory, often hypocritical, and always flamboyant statements. No word quite captures their all-encompassing magnitude, their frequency, and, often, their sheer pointlessness. “Lies” is always a good place to start, but in Trump’s case it only begins to cover the problem. “Bullshitting” is too cute for the rolling crisis we find ourselves in. “Gaslighting” implies that something strategic is happening... Читать дальше...
