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The New York Times Magazine recently published a cover story about Spike Jonze, whose cultural productions — for two decades, at this point — have hovered uncannily around the edges of the four heimlich dispositions: […]
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I’ve been a mere lurker at Infinite Summer, the online book club which sprang up to honor the late David Foster Wallace by exploring his magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Thousands of people have participated in […]
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The New Gods are stronger, faster, and smarter than other generations.
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Last week the New York Times’s occasional “Op-Art” column was furnished by Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty, whose handwriting manuals explain and promote the italic hand. In “Write Stuff,” they offer italic as a balm […]
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Now that the radical punch of punk seems no more potent than a daisy in a National Guardsman’s rifle, the artsy-fartsy fundament of its posture has become as evident — and as significant — as […]
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Like Bea Arthur, Pearl Bailey, and Redd Foxx, the televisual omnipresence of JULIUS “NIPSEY” RUSSELL (1918?-2005) belied his status as a veteran of less sanitized showbiz pursuits. He tap-danced his way out of his native […]
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As a visiting nurse in New York’s tenements at the turn of the 20th century, MARGARET SANGER (1879-1966) once heard a woman recovering from a self-induced abortion beg her doctor for information on how to […]
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Director Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has many fine qualities, but they founder and die away to nothing on the eerie smoothness of his leading man’s chin. Johnny Depp may be beautiful, but […]
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We’re riding a swell of black-humored children’s literature, these days — the Lemony Snicket books are just a whitecap. However, as dark as these contemporary tales may be, none is so misanthropic as those of […]
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R. Sikoryak is a versatile, witty, and well-read cartoonist and illustrator who’s retold Dante’s Inferno in the style of Bazooka Joe bubblegum comics, Crime and Punishment in a Bob Kane-era Batman mode (above), and The […]
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Even though there’s no shepherd issuing orders, we behave like docile sheep.
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High-, low-, no-, and hilobrow members of the Partisan Generation include: Albert Camus, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clement Greenberg (whose 1939 Partisan Review essay, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” and 1953 Commentary essay, “The Plight of Our Culture,” are […]
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THE BOOK Terms of Service Statement of Rights and Responsibilities This statement of the terms of service of The Book is derived from principles of the public sphere, covered in the U.N. Declaration of Human […]
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