Required Reading

The classicists are fighting! Emily Wilson, whose celebrated Odyssey translation bucked historically Western and misogynistic approaches, has caused quite a stir with her scathing critique of Christopher Nolan's film in the London Review of Books. Far from a stuffy academic take, her text recognizes the murkiness of adaptations and still insists that Nolan bungles the questions of humanity and morality at the center of the epic:

But the representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar – but Nolan doesn’t. The Trojans are dehumanised by their masks; we know none of them by name or face. The hands of Odysseus and Telemachus are bloodied only by the most righteous, computer-game modes of killing, and we feel no pity or horror at the deaths of their victims, whether Trojans, giants, suitors or slaves. During the sack of Troy – which he supposedly organised – Odysseus gazes around in bewilderment and horror, as if he has never seen a massacre before.

Filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang's Fresh Kill (1994), starring Erin McMurtry and my personal icon Sarita Choudhury, was decidedly ahead of its time. It follows a lesbian couple as they expose a network of corporate pollution, weaving what the filmmaker calls an "eco-cybernoia" story about capitalism and hacking as activism. Critic Elissa Suh spoke with Cheang about the film for Dirt:

ES: The toxic fish conspiracy runs through the film, but food is also almost ambient: images of sushi bars, contamination, the commodity chain. Was food specifically part of the argument, or did that come naturally as part of the Staten Island setting?

SLC: Food is quite relevant to me personally. Living in New York, my work always involved collaboration with different performers and artists, and we always ended up in the kitchen—my kitchen. I was living on the Bowery at the time, and people would gather, and because we were poor artists who couldn’t afford restaurants, sharing food at home became a very communal event. I’ve always had that tradition. The fish and the sushi in Fresh Kill are different, though. It’s almost reverse engineering. The logic of toxic waste being dumped from developed countries into developing ones gets flipped: the toxic fish comes back through the food supply, comes back to haunt you. It’s a kind of revenge.

In 2021, curator Claire Mander set out to challenge the famously sexist history of monuments by founding the Artist's Garden on a terrace in London, the world's only public sculpture garden dedicated to women artists. But as is so often the case with public space, the city ordered it cleared by October (which the founder suspects is part of a plan to develop the property). For the Guardian, Anita Chaudhuri reports on the movement to save this vital space as a haven for repose, community, and celebration:

Hodby believes that sculpture has a particular power to engage the public in a way that art on gallery walls does not. “There’s an immediacy about it, there’s no separation between the work and the world.” This is true. On the day I visit, London is in the grip of a heatwave. Office workers, builders on an early lunch, bemused tourists, all throng the space. A toddler crawls towards Mexican artist Adeline de Monseignat’s pebbled Croissant, no doubt spying a potential see-saw. In the distance, I spot people posing for selfies beside Alice Wilson’s Savoy, a giant forest of technicolor timbers.

The Atlantic is on a years-long streak of running stories declaring the "end of reading." Of course, we all know what we're up against — tech companies threaten to sap us of our creativity and the American education system consistently fails young people — but what function do these sensationalist pieces serve beyond getting more clicks for the website? Timothy Noah writes in the New Republic about the magazine's lazy "doom porn" problem, which extends well beyond the literacy crisis:

Other things that The Atlantic has declared to be ending: “The End of Men” (July/August 2010), “The End of Diplomacy” (February 2026), The End of High-School English” (December 2022), “The End of Minimalism” (July/August 2020), “The End of Trust” (November 2021), “The End of Human Rights” (March 2026), “The End of Democracy Has Already Begun” (September 2024), “This is the Way a World Order Ends” (April 2025), “The End of Rule of Law in America” (May 2025), “How America Ends” (December 2019), “The End of the West” (November 2002), and, most hyperbolically of all, Francis Fukuyama flagging “More Proof That This Is Really the End of History” (October 2022). Only very occasionally does the thing that’s ending merit a “good riddance,” but in September 2025 The Atlantic did post a Hanna Rosin podcast under the heading, “Is This the End of Kids on Social Media?” Alas, it wasn’t, except on Facebook.

Students in India have been organizing mass protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party after a Supreme Court justice likened unemployed young people to cockroaches — giving the movement its incredible name: "Cockroach Janata Party." Arundhati Roy, one of my favorite writers, contextualizes the movement, and the violent backlash likely to still come, within broader fights for justice across India for the Walrus:

It’s silly to expect major political change to come from this. But to dismiss it as just a heady moment would be obtuse. It’s no surprise that the wires and live-screaming TV channels are burning up with gossip and innuendo and conspiracy theories about foreign funding and Central Intelligence Agency plots. Speaking as a proud andolanjeevi (Modi’s derisive name for people like me), I confess that when it all began, I was wary too. I worried that we were heading into another Anna Hazare moment—that so-called anti-corruption people’s movement of 2011—which, regardless of its early intentions, eventually gifted us three terms of being ruled by a political party that has destroyed every institution in this country, one that sees no separation between itself as a political party and the government of India, one that respects neither the country nor its citizens, and one that has shamed us internationally and brought India to its knees.

But my suspicions about the Cockroach Janta Party were allayed when I saw the hostility of the mainstream media toward them. That, to me, was the first and most reassuring sign.

Katrina vanden Heuvel's new piece in the Nation is one of the most hopeful pieces I've read recently. She identifies the "politics of joy" that suffuse Zohran Mamdani's administration and the grassroots movement that elected him, a reminder that joy is a fundamental right at the heart of civic life:

Least publicized, but no less impactful, the administration has also highlighted the city’s many free and affordable leisure opportunities that may otherwise go under-utilized. City Hall launched an interactive “Summer in NYC” website designed to help youth find nearby activities, from free movie screenings to craft classes at local libraries—all of which have underlying public safety benefits. As Renita Francois, the new deputy mayor of community safety said, “Safety is not just the absence of violence, but the presence of opportunity, dignity, and community.”

As if we needed any further proof of the government's disastrous cuts to research funding, some climate scientists have turned to an unlikely source of income: OnlyFans. Bryce Canyon of River Front Times spoke to the researchers about the dire state of affairs:

"We should not have to make an OnlyFans account for our marmots,” Renkey said again, and she’s right. The federal funding landscape for scientific research is the actual problem, and a marmot subscription service is not a substitute for stable institutional support. Dan Blumstein, the UCLA professor who leads the research, was direct about the stakes. “Nationally funded research has been around since World War II and has led to an incredible increase of knowledge globally,” he said. “But that’s what’s under threat right now. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The Huntington has been recirculating its touching 2024 documentary on Betye Saar, that indomitable artist who passed away earlier this week, just before she would have celebrated her 100th birthday today:

Imagine paying someone to dunk your book into a cup of coffee ... the social currency of appearing well-read is really doing a number on us:

@rubysstudiox 📚 what is happening to reading? When did it become so serious we now outsource it? ✍️ more thoughts and a proper full on rant is up on Substack (link in bio) #booktok #reading #books #intellectual #culture ♬ Moment Of Reflection - Jhonatan Rodrigues & Piano Sky & Dee Piano

Love to see some divine intervention at the gym:

@joyfilledjessica Don’t think that went as he planned. 😅 @metabolicmuscle #gymhumor #fitnesshumor #gymgirl #fitnessmotivation #funny ♬ original sound - joyfilledjessica

Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon and comprises a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

• Community
• Required Reading