Books and Arts Archives

Wednesday

May 15, 2024

Christopher Priest was a grievously underrated novelist

There really ought to be a word to describe the dispiriting realization that a great writer has slipped through our fingers without the culture at large ever quite appreciating what’s been lost. The novelist Christopher Priest, who died earlier this year of cancer at the age of eighty, was one such figure. It would be glib to describe him as the nearly-man of English fiction, for this wasn’t quite the case — instead his career represented a sequence of missed opportunities for the world beyond his chosen genre to recognize his skill and quiet profundity. In some ways, the early part of his publication history closely resembles that of J.G. Ballard without the mid-career renaissance Ballard enjoyed.

Amelia Butler-Gallie

Was the psychedelic art movement worth it?

If modern America were ever to have its own “the Great God Pan is Dead” moment, it would arrive in the form of Popeyes and KFC celebrating 4/20 as a marketing boon. After all, what better way is there to signal the end of counterculture than by chomping down on some discounted fried chicken? Devotees of the “4/20” marijuana festival, commemorated globally each year, have bemoaned a string of corporate sponsorship deals which are, they sniff, at odds with the event’s hallowed “hippie” origins. So when San Francisco decided earlier this year to cancel its annual 4/20 celebrations on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park, citing city-wide budget cuts and a lack of lucrative brand deals, the whole affair was a little on the nose. Come on, man!

Alexander Larman

The individualistic talents of the Pet Shop Boys

In April, the Pet Shop Boys, pop music’s most influential and beloved synth-pop duo, returned with a new album, Nonetheless. The British pair could hardly be described as wildly prolific, having released a comparatively meager fifteen albums since their debut Please in 1986. (Their one-word titles usually contain some oblique joke or other; the act’s singer Neil Tennant once remarked that the idea for the first LP was that it amused him that a record buyer would ask for the “Pet Shop Boys, please.”) Yet one reason for this relatively sparse output is that they take a painstaking amount of time to ensure not only that each of their albums is polished to perfection, but that it is existentially different from their previous release.

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

The new revival of The Wiz is psychologically bland

When The Wiz first graced Broadway in 1975 it positioned itself as a gutsy ode to black culture. The adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with a book by William F. Brown and music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls, not only featured songs infused with R&B, gospel and soul but a fully black cast.It became a long-running hit, won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and inspired a 1978 movie of the same name, starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. The Wiz’s storied beginning and genre-busting premise only makes this revival feel more deficient. Directed by Schele Williams, with updated writing by comedian Amber Ruffin, The Wiz comes to the money-spinning Marquis Theatre following a national tour which visited thirteen cities.

William Newton

The digital Ozymandias: Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian on his mission to make Giza last forever

The Giza Plateau is perhaps the first location that springs to mind when we think about Ancient Egypt. With its collection of pyramids, temples and monuments, all watched over by the Great Sphinx, the area has fascinated visitors for thousands of years. Its structures, often decorated with magnificent inscriptions, paintings and sculptures, have been around for so long that it’s only natural to assume that they always will be. Yet the years have not always been kind to Giza. The challenge of preservation has become even more critical than back in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s day when he wrote “Ozymandias,” his contemplative poem about the passage of time.

The Spectator

This month in culture: June 2024

The Fall Guy In theaters now Ryan Gosling’s career is rather bizarre if you think about it, from drippy romcom protagonist in The Notebook to brooding car noir hero in Drive to laughable failure in The Nice Guys to musical star in La La Land and Barbie. Now he takes a stab at renewing his hardass ways in The Fall Guy, an adaptation of Lee Majors’s 1980s series which pairs him with Emily Blunt and is, in a way, an homage to the careers of “stars who do their own stunts” even if Gosling does not do so himself. There’s even a stunt show planned for Universal Studios’ Hollywood theme park based on the movie, prior to its release.

Tuesday

April 16, 2024

D.J. Taylor

The wild times on the late, great John Belushi’s most famous film

A good place to start with The Blues Brothers, Daniel de Visé’s engaging account of the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd comedy classic, is in the spring preceding the movie’s summer 1980 release. By this stage, the production was mired in controversy and a martyr to industry scuttlebutt. Press reports put the expenditure at anywhere between $35 million and $40 million (in fact it sailed home at a mere $27.5 million) — and this at a time when over-subsidized box office calamities such as Steven Spielberg’s 1941 and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate had prompted many a lament about Hollywood hubris. The rough cut came in at a mammoth three hours, at a time when two were reckoned excessive.

Michael M. Rosen

The ups and downs of the long road toward workplace parity

In late 2019, for the first time ever, American women outnumbered men in the college-educated labor force. Women now earn bachelor’s degrees and doctorates at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and they account for more than 56 percent of law students. They lead more than 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Has the United States come a long way in equalizing opportunities for men and women? Definitely. Do we still have a long way to go? Absolutely, says Josie Cox in Women Money Power, her compelling analysis of the ups and downs of the long road toward workplace parity.

Oliver Soden

The talented Evan S. Connell

When the journalist Steve Paul began his biography of the writer Evan S. Connell, a young librarian was helping him access research material. She happened across a photograph, and remarked, “What a suave-looking dude.” Connell had movie-star good looks. Of his eight novels, two are now packaged as classics of American literature. This on top of a biography of Goya; a 2009 Man Booker International nomination for lifetime achievement; and a bestselling history of a battle in the Great Sioux War of 1876. Acolytes recommend his greatest book, Mrs. Bridge, with the confident smile that looks forward to welcoming another member to the exclusive band of Connellites.

Amelia Butler-Gallie

Gabriel García Márquez’s posthumously published novel is unconvincing

Love and loneliness. Loneliness and love. These two motifs, these two codependent deities, underpin all of grand maestro Gabriel García Márquez’s fiction — from his bewitching magnum opus One Hundred Years of Solitude to the tumultuous romance of Love in the Time of Cholera. His final sultry, sun-soaked and unexpected work, Until August, which he attempted to complete while struggling with dementia, is a continuation of these oeuvre-defining themes. It’s a damn shame it’s half-baked. The circumstances under which Until August came to be written might, themselves, one day make a rather droll short story, perhaps even a sparky novella.

Christopher Sandford

A revelatory account of the post-war exploits of the House of Windsor

Power and Glory is, as its subtitle implies, a tale of survival. In a fast-paced history of the British throne from the years 1945-53, Alexander Larman, a seasoned chronicler of the House of Windsor, depicts a dynasty reeling from the 1936 abdication of Edward VIII — “David” to intimates — and the storm of war that broke over Europe three years later.

Alexander Larman

Christopher Nolan, creator of worlds

At this year’s Oscars ceremony, there was a moment that only those blind to symbolism could have failed to pick up. The presenter of the Best Director award was none other than Steven Spielberg, himself the most commercially successful film director who has ever lived. The recipient was Christopher Nolan, whose films so far this millennium have grossed over $6 billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest earning filmmaker of all time. Those above him — no disrespect to the likes of the Russo brothers, David Yates and even Michael Bay — are journeymen directors whose franchise work makes a lot of money without bothering the Academy; the auteur-ish likes of Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Spielberg have all now been rewarded with their own Best Director Oscars.

Calla Di Pietro

A cultural summer in the city

New York is gilded in beguiling art. It has an excess of riches and though summer is one of the best times to visit, quenching your cultural thirst can be difficult, as the arts patrons decamp to the Hamptons and watering holes ending in -an. From museums to galleries to street art at subway stations or parks, each borough is a canvas, so much so that it is often an afterthought against a landscape of pavement and honking cars. Will you be uptown for the first Monday in May? While the performances on the Met Gala’s red carpet are an art form in themselves, the exhibit the gala underwrites offers plenty to check out uptown as the tulips bloom on Park Avenue.

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

An Enemy of the People is hit-or-miss

As I entered the lobby of Circle in the Square Theatre, now showing Broadway’s hottest ticket, An Enemy of the People, staff were upselling booze. “Do you want to buy a shot?” offered one enthusiastic barman, waving a bottle of bracing Linie aquavit. He added, grinning: “It’s what the actors drink on stage.” Sam Gold’s revival of Henrik Ibsen’s didactic and stuffy morality play aims to draw direct comparisons between past and present, including what alcohol we consume (more on that later). In late nineteenth-century Norway, a town finds itself prosperous by selling access to the local spa baths, which supposedly have curative properties. When Dr.

William Newton

Sotheby’s latest gamble

On February 1, 2024, Sotheby’s auction house announced a new fee structure that came as something of a surprise to the art world. For decades, Sotheby’s and its competitors have been one-upping each other with respect to the fees charged to buyers and sellers. While these fees have unquestionably increased the profitability of the auction houses themselves, in their complexity they have often bewildered auction participants and market observers alike. In theory at least, that may be about to change. Beginning this spring, Sotheby’s new fees will be both lower and potentially easier for all parties to understand. They apply to sellers consigning lots for auction after April 15, and to buyers beginning on May 20.

Sunday

March 17, 2024

Ben Domenech

Where is the clarity in modern center-right foreign policy?

When Ohio senator J.D. Vance arrived at the Munich Security Conference in February, he had a clear message meant for the world: the Republican Party was no longer the party of Ronald Reagan. Standing outside the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, he informed reporters that he did not believe American support for combat against authoritarian regimes should extend to Ukraine — and that he would continue to oppose efforts to “increase the supply of weapons in Ukraine because we’ve already expended so many of our munitions and resources” to achieve a victory that he does not foresee. Vance’s bootstrap story is well-known — he’s a Marine veteran turned Yale Law grad turned venture capitalist made prominent by his bestselling Appalachia memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

Clement Knox

An impressive examination of the conjoined fates of Iraq and the United States

In July 4, 1821, secretary of state John Quincy Adams gave a speech to Congress on American foreign policy. He said of the United States that “wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” For the first 150 years of the republic, its leaders dutifully observed Adams’s counsel. But after Woodrow Wilson’s intervention in World War One, American policy has tacked in the opposite direction. For over a century America has indeed been going abroad, searching for monsters to destroy.

Philip Clark

An unvarnished insight into the mind of Sonny Rollins

In the mid-1950s, alongside his close friend and intimate confidant John Coltrane, the revered saxophonist Sonny Rollins completely revolutionized notions about how the tenor saxophone could function within modern jazz. In landmark albums like Freedom Suite, Way Out West and Tenor Madness, Rollins pushed the art of melodic improvisation to transcendent new heights, his charismatic sound, his snaking melodies and his rhythmic liquidity ringing the changes as surely as Louis Armstrong had done thirty years earlier. And like Louis, and later Miles Davis, there came a point where Rollins wrestled free of the jazz aficionado’s gaze to become admired by a more general audience.

Alison Kerr

A look into Billie Holiday’s final year

If ever a singer were difficult to pin down, it was Billie Holiday (1915-59), whose harrowing life story was first told in an unreliable memoir published just three years before her death. With Lady Sings the Blues, the jazz legend known for her emotional honesty not only allowed herself to be misrepresented (after all, she wasn’t even a blues singer), but actively participated in fabricating the fake stories which proliferated through the book. Some of these — such as a misstatement of her place of birth — are still repeated to this day. Two decades after the publication of Lady Sings the Blues a steady stream of more accurate biographies began to appear.

Mitchell Jackson

Who’s afraid of Judith Butler?

Gay icon Judy Garland. Folk queen Judy Collins. Now, we have the lesbian saint Judith Butler (as of 2020, they/them saint Judith Butler.) Once resigned to recognition on college campuses for their unreadable 1990 tome Gender Trouble, which posited that gender is a performance, the queer theorist and Berkeley professor took off as a mainstream hero in the past decade. Tumblr kids reposted quotes from their lengthy, poorly written academic work. New York magazine declared Butler a “pop celebrity.” In March, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Butler’s first commercial book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? Its prolonged roll-out aims to credit Butler for “birthing” the nonbinary and trans identities of the twenty-first century. It’s as much a publicity stunt as a book.