books

The Company She Kept

Michelle Dean The New Republic
A survey of the life, work and associations of the late New York Review of Books editor Elizabeth Hardwick, the transplanted Southerner who became a writer of note among the literary and political circles comprising the New York Intellectuals of the pre- and postwar period, she had a knack for illustrating what might have been called feminist themes by way of specific details of specific lives.

Tom Morello: Making America Rage Again

Steve Appleford Capital & Main
Tom Morello performing “We’re at a crucial historical juncture, where literally the fate of the planet hangs by a thread,” says rocker Tom Morello. “We are musicians, so our message is in the mosh pit.”

books

We Know About Bad Books, But Are There Bad Readers, Too?

Merve Emre Boston Review
The author queries the existence of bad readers, linking causes not to illiteracy or injuries of class or the diffusion of mass culture, but to a Cold War literary trend sporting "an abundance of paraliterary works," such as memoirs, diaries, biographies, diplomatic studies, and feature reports as primers for engaging with literary texts as seemingly historically accurate yet stressing outcomes and expectations consonant with systemic social ends.

Protesting Racism And Hate With Political Art

Steven Brower Print
Following the horrific events precipitated by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members on Saturday in Charlottesville, VA, where 32-year-old Heather Heyer was murdered, President Trump shockingly came out in favor of the alt-right. The response by our community was swift. Some illustrators and designers created work anew, others re-purposed existing political art, illustrations and posters, and these began appearing in online publications and social media.

books

The Sense of Art: In Memoriam John Berger

Mike Gonzalez International Socialism
British artist, novelist, prodigious essayist and poet John Berger, best known for her magisterial and approachable Ways of Seeing and who died in January, is remembered here for his radical approach to Art, when it functions to make sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, when it becomes a meeting place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, what Berger called guts and honor.

The Public’s “Julius Caesar” Brilliantly Trolls Donald Trump, and Masses “Resist”

Lucy Komisar The Komisar Scoop
Oskar Eustis, director of a mesmerizing Public Theater staging of Shakespeare’s play about taking down an incipient dictator, says that “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” This Delacorte Central Park enactment may be one of the best of the plays inspired (or provoked) by the election and presidency of Donald Trump.

Tidbits - May 4, 2017 - Reader Comments: We Remember-May 4, 1970; Korea; Peace Movement; Pre-Existing Conditions; March on McDonald's; Boycotts; Responses to Culture posts; Know Your Rights: What To Do; European Left; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: We Remember - May 4, 1970; New Korean War?; Where is the Peace Movement; Pre-Existing Conditions; March on McDonald's May 23; Boycotts; Workers; Luddites; Marine Le Pen; California Single-Payer; Responses to Culture posts - Identity Politics; Picasso's Guernica; The Zookeeper's Wife; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; Lunch and Bologna; Donna Leon; The Handmaid's Tale; KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: What To Do If You're Stopped; The European Left; and more...

theater

O'Neill's Radical "The Hairy Ape" Enthralls

Lucy Komisar The Komisar Scoop
You might never see a more powerful, stunning production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape" than this one directed by Richard Jones and starring Bobby Cannavale at the Park Avenue Armory. This is a play about class, and class consciousness.

“I’m Going to Learn to Dance If It Takes Me All Night and Day” - Thoughts on Chuck Berry

Geoffrey Jacques Portside
Much commentary on the late Chuck Berry will focus on how his songs expressed fun and teenage angst. This is the right thing to do. Yet there’s more. For example, Berry’s obsession with the comparative qualities of fast cars — most brilliantly displayed in his song “Maybellene” — did not just reflect the rise of post-WW II consumerist culture....He preferred V-8 Fords over Cadillacs because he spent several years in the late 1940s and early 1950s helping make Ford cars.

What Would Woody Do?

Ron Briley History News Network
Woody Guthrie reminds progressive citizens of a radical tradition upon which they might draw in the contemporary fight for social justice.
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