From the category archives:

Linkblog

A selection of my published work since 2001 is available here. Contact me with any specific requests.

Linkblog

Imagine how much livelier criticism would be if novice reviewers—instead of dreaming of the day when they, too, might meet Malcolm Gladwell and his hair—availed themselves of review collections by Sheed, Brophy, McCarthy, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Marvin Mudrick, Seymour Krim, H.L. Mencken, Anatole Broyard, and Philip Larkin and entertained those voices in their heads. What a tutorial that would be. Anyway, it beats moping.

Imagine how much livelier criticism would be if novice reviewers—instead of dreaming of the day when they, too, might meet Malcolm Gladwell and his hair—availed …

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Linkblog

Search” is not the most exciting demand that one can make of a text.

Search” is not the most exciting demand that one can make of a text.
The Battle of the Book…

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Linkblog

Anyone remember "The Decline of Book Reviewing" from ’59?

Anyone remember “The Decline of Book Reviewing” from ’59?
New Republic
It was published in Harper’s, “and yet here we are, almost a half-century later, …

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Linkblog

Amin Indian Cuisine (3/5)

Amin Indian Cuisine (3/5)
In a cruel twist of fate—or maybe it’s just plain funny—I finally got shown up for the true honky I am …

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Linkblog

Students from around the world synthesize new forms of life at the iGEM jamboree. – By Jesse Lichtenstein – Slate Magazine

Students from around the world synthesize new forms of life at the iGEM jamboree. – By Jesse Lichtenstein – Slate Magazine…

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Linkblog

Food: Premium Cola, The Ethical Cola Company

Food: Premium Cola, The Ethical Cola Company…

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Linkblog

Early rave review for There Will Be Blood, the new…

Early rave review for There Will Be Blood, the new…

Early rave review for There Will Be Blood, the new PT Anderson/Daniel Day-Lewis film, …

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Linkblog

What might that deep-seated purpose of art-making be? Geoffrey Miller and other theorists have proposed that art serves as a sexual display, a means of flaunting one’s talented palette of genes. Again, Ms. Dissanayake has other ideas. To contemporary Westerners, she said, art may seem detached from the real world, an elite stage on which proud peacocks and designated visionaries may well compete for high stakes. But among traditional cultures and throughout most of human history, she said, art has also been a profoundly communal affair, of harvest dances, religious pageants, quilting bees, the passionate town rivalries that gave us the spires of Chartres, Reims and Amiens.

What might that deep-seated purpose of art-making be? Geoffrey Miller and other theorists have proposed that art serves as a sexual display, a means of …

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