Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk
The Souls of Yellow Folk by Wesley Yang My rating: 4 of 5 stars It was once a pop-socio-psychological commonplace of American foreign-policy commentary that terrorism on behalf of political … Continue reading
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag My rating: 3 of 5 stars Susan Sontag’s oeuvre is a long palinode. Identified for years with the positions she took, or … Continue reading
Nicholas Mirzoeff, How to See the World
How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More by Nicholas Mirzoeff My rating: 3 of 5 stars Mirzoeff self-consciously updates … Continue reading
Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders My rating: 4 of 5 stars Someone once said that beneath or behind … Continue reading
Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent
Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham My rating: 2 of 5 stars When I was younger—say in the late 1980s, early 1990s—the concept of free artistic expression was primarily … Continue reading
Robert Dale Parker, How to Interpret Literature
How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies by Robert Dale Parker My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a primer for undergraduates on the major … Continue reading
How the Novel Succeeded and How You Can Too
[I post this at Tumblr yesterday in response to an anonymous questioner using that platform’s “ask” feature. I am posting it here because this is generally where I keep longer … Continue reading
The Quest for Restoration; or, Gone Girl and Interstellar Considered as the Same Film
Thesis: Gone Girl and Interstellar share a single narrative, though they tell it in two different genres (the Hitchcockian darkly comic thriller and the Kubrickian/Spielbergian science fiction epic, respectively). Were … Continue reading
