Dostoevsky lost everything at the Wiesbaden casino, but the episode seemed to finally reveal to him the true depth of his habit, that it threatened not only his marriage but the life of his wife.Benjamin Shull · Issue 7 ·
What is most appealing about O’Connor’s work is that, in it, she is not afraid to look into the unknown and let it remain unknown—to give it revelation without resolution. Jason Walker · Issue 7 ·
What could be more of a California archetype, a California life, perhaps even a California cliché, Haven argues, than a mid-century émigré coming to a place that is held up as a place, a state of mind, of constant reinvention?Lydia Pyne · Issue 7 ·
Recognizing the distinction between unity and uniformity—between, on the one hand, a national unity made up of divergent traditions and, on the other, an unrealistic national uniformity that is rarely manifested except during brief, unsustainable periods of patriotic enthusiasm—is an elementary prerequisite for cultural history and analysis.Steven Grosby · Issue 7 ·
When in the fourteenth century a French knight displayed to pilgrims what he claimed was the blood-stained shroud of Christ, naturally that discovery attracted a great deal of interest.David Carrier ·
With over 150 opera costumes from the San Carlo opera house, many of them on mannequins, and more than 300 porcelain objects from the Royal Factory of Capodimonte, this was a very Neapolitan exercise in its overstimulation. David Carrier ·
Oppenheimer’s introduction tells the story of Hickey’s unrealized book project Pagan America—a country of a “large, secular, commercial democracy,” united by shared icons across cultural strata.Julia Friedman · Issue 7 ·
The stillness of Shulamit Ran’s high harmonics, and fragments and sequences of unrelated materials, seem to represent the disjointed, depleted nature of mind when confronted with the destruction of the bodily self.Daniel Asia · Issue 6 ·
By not knowing, the recent positions taken by political philosophers over the nature of justice repeat, but superficially so, those much earlier theological arguments over sin and free will.Steven Grosby · Issue 6 ·
Reading opens us up to a topsy-turvy, funhouse-mirror, Alice in Wonderland universe where we follow in wonder every hint of the hero, intermittently puzzling over what our author is doing.Jonathan Hartmann · Issue 6 ·
A book arrives to readers already finished. If we allow ourselves to be mystified as we age, we might wonder at the object in our hands.Ben Lewellyn-Taylor · Issue 6 ·