Reviews »
Hot Pink: by Adam Levin
Adam Levin’s The Instructions should have been a bigger deal. Sure, it received a fair amount of publicity and rave reviews when McSweeney’s published it in 2010, but insular literary credibility isn’t enough for
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Against Architecture: by Franco La Cecla
Franco La Cecla seems to have the weight of the industrialized world on his shoulders. In Against Architecture, his diatribe against the profession that seemingly poisoned society’s well, he’s all too eager to transfer
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Collage Culture: Examining the 21st Century’s Identity Crisis: by Aaron Rose and Mandy Kahn, designed by Brian Roettinger
It’s tempting – and common – and somewhat of an introductory crutch – to begin a piece of writing about art/literature/big ideas by quoting someone else. It lets the world know that you are
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Turing’s Cathedral: by George Dyson
It doesn’t matter whether you’re reading this review on an e-reader, laptop display, mobile device or silicon-wired oracular implant, that device is parsing countless pieces of information and acting on them in the exact
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So Rich, So Poor: by Peter Edelman
Even the hardest-core conservative can admit that we have a problem with poverty in this country. Whether it stems from a lack of personal responsibility or of opportunity, far too many people depend on
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The Art of Fielding: by Chad Harbach
A recent article appeared in The Atlantic decrying Chad Harbach’s much-loved debut novel The Art of Fielding as the most overrated book of the year. In this multi-page takedown, B.R. Myers laid out a
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Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices: by Noah Feldman
“So there’s this Yankee, a Westerner in a cowboy hat, an ex-Klansmen and a Jew…” Though this may sound like the beginning of an off-color joke or the panel for a trashy daytime talk
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Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room: by Geoff Dyer
One does not simply watch Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 quasi-sci-fi masterpiece. It unfolds outside of simple narrative, character study, even symbolism, preventing any conventional connection to the work even as it beautifully invites a
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Stay Awake: by Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon would be a great poet of loneliness, if his writing weren’t so frustratingly devoid of poetry. All the stories in Chaon’s new collection, Stay Awake, unfold within a narrowly defined emotional range;
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Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond 1977-1981: by Liz Worth
During the early-to-mid-2000s, Canada was suddenly turning out prominent bands such as Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade making it once again a hub of indie music. There was a real sense of
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