The Show Goes On: Nik Sheehan reviews the 2023 Best Picture Oscar Nominees
Filmmaker and critic Nik Sheehan takes a last-minute tour of the Oscars before the show goes on.
Joined at the Mind: Brian Fawcett (1944-2022)
Brian Fawcett wrote books for people who find television too slow. Stan Persky remembers a writer who never forgot his hometown, and with whom he shared a “joint mind.”
The trouble with Stanley Tucci’s Taste (and the right way to make tomato sauce)
Brian Fawcett on how to make Euclid Avenue Tomato Sauce. Everything you need to know to get it right.
The Answer to Some Things (and not others)
Ken Belford’s selected poems, “The Answer to Everything.” Or, as reviewers Vivien Lougheed and John Harris suggest, “the answer to some things (and not others).”
Far from the Madding Crowd
Douglas Murray’s “The Madness of Crowds,” a critique of the “social justice movement,” is a conservative writer’s response to gays, feminists, race, and trans people. Stan Persky reviews it, keeping an eye on the tripwires in an ideological minefield.
Scribbles from Italy: Intelligence
Vian Andrews is out in the olive orchards, clearing brush from under the trees and thinking about ChatGPT and the future of artificial and other kinds of intelligence. The latest passage from Andrews’ journal about life in the Umbrian countryside, “Scribbles from Italy.”
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto / b / mimesis
A tour through the history of writing. From David Shields’ 2010 manifesto, “Reality Hunger.” Time for a second look.
The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars (Ch. 4): Concentration, and Testicles
Brian Fawcett learns about the gory details of life on the farm. Ch. 4 of “The Sussex Variations.”
From the Archives: 20 Years Ago, in 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq. Here’s what Dooney’s said about the imperial “punitive expedition.”
From the Archives: Twenty years ago, the U.S. invaded Iraq. Here’s what Dooney’s said two decades ago about the American imperial “punitive expedition,” as it rolled across Iraq.
The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars (Ch. 3): Females and Males
Brian Fawcett learns about males and females, both human and porcine, on a pig farm in Sussex, England in the early 1960s.