Books
Reader’s Diary: Lorraine Lupo's 'By Way Of'
Cards on the table: I prefer short poems to long ones, slender bodies of work to massive ones. So naturally, I consider the best way to read poetry is not in a book, but in a chapbook.
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The Life of One of the 20th Century’s Most Influential Nude Models
"That which is the immodesty of other women has been my virtue — my willingness that the world should gaze upon my figure unadorned," Audrey Munson, the favorite nude model of the Beaux Arts movement in the United States, once proclaimed.
Books
Reader’s Diary: Kristin Ross's 'May ’68 and Its Afterlives'
Some thought the Arab Spring could not have happened without social media. But the necessity makes the means and not vice versa. May ’68 didn’t need Facebook. They had transistor radios.
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Blueprint for Counter Education: Republished and Still Daring After All These Years
In the United States today, education, especially in its public forms, paid for by taxpayers, is frequently the most contentious subject on the agendas of politicians, pundits, public-policy researchers, private-foundation funders, controversy-loving TV talking heads, pedagogical “experts” and, of c
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Thirty Years On, Colab Members Assess Their Successes and Failures
Last month, members of Colab gathered at Printed Matter for the opening of a new iteration of the A. More Store, the collective’s pop-up exhibit of cheap multiples. The display coincides with the publication of A Book About Colab (and Related Activities) (2015), a sumptuous collection of archival im
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Reader's Diary: ‘Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy’
No one writes letters anymore, but I still like reading them — especially when both sides of a correspondence are collected between two covers. No narrative, no argument — just the mercurial yet implicit unity of a relationship. Still, I’m not sure why I picked up this book.
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Piercing Clarity: Gail Mazur’s Poetry
Aptly titled, Forbidden City is Gail Mazur’s seventh book of poetry. Before getting the book — which she sent me — I knew that Gail had written the poems in the years after her husband, Michael Mazur (1935–2009), had died of congestive heart failure.
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The Forgotten Artistic Playgrounds of the 20th Century
The Playground Project explores an era of artistic play.
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“The Ephemeral Moment of Exchange” in Barbara Bloom’s Wrapping Papers
Bloom’s papers mine the histories of gift rituals, interrogate the meaning objects are endowed with as gifts, and place value on an object that is meant to be used once and then discarded.
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Reader’s Diary: Edward St. Aubyn’s ‘The Patrick Melrose Novels’ (Continued)
When I left off last week I was halfway through this quartet of low-life-in-the-midst-of-high-life novels, dissatisfied with the series’ prelude, Never Mind, but encouraged by the relative superiority of book two, Bad News.
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Illustrated Dolphins and Vampire Squid from the Dawn of Ocean Exploration
In the 16th century, Pierre Belon published one of the earliest scientific depictions of a dolphin: a woodcut with finely hatched skin and pointed teeth.
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Reader's Diary: Edward St. Aubyn's ‘The Patrick Melrose Novels’
To begin reading a contemporary novel isn’t easy, if you’re not in the habit.