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"There’s been so much written about changing political demographics since President Obama was reëlected last November that you could be forgiven for believing that we now live in a country called Liberal America.” But “the wheel of history never stops turning, and no majority is permanent."
— In today’s Daily Comment, George Packer writes about changing opinions in America: http://nyr.kr/Z5ceTZ -
"Pynchon novels, like certain dishes, tend to suffer only from excessive explanation. I advocate surrender to Pynchon; letting your mind toss on the wild currents of his language is a lot more enjoyable than treating his novels like puzzles, wondering where the pieces fit: Who is Rachel Owlglass? Why are we in Egypt? Just enjoy the bumps—or try to."
— Alexander Nazaryan looks back at Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, “V.” as it turns fifty: http://nyr.kr/16mlGZv(Source: newyorker.com)
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"There were slave revolts in the antebellum South. Someday, perhaps, someone will make a movie about one. For that someone, reading William Styron’s “The Confessions of Nat Turner” would be a good place to start. And “Django Unchained” could serve as a primer on what not to do. That this travesty was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay, let alone that it won, is an aesthetic and a moral scandal."
— Hendrik Hertzberg on “Django Unchained” and the context of slavery: http://nyr.kr/W8J4Gy(Source: newyorker.com)
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Mike Brodie says that he never really wanted to be an artist. But he’s travelled over fifty thousand miles by train, lived with an underground rock band in Philadelphia and with vegans in Portland, and photographed it all. His images—of trains with the earth flying by, of a tender sleeping embrace—are touching and terrifying, exciting and raw. This work will be released as Brodie’s first book, “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity,” by Twin Palms Publishers and TBW Books, on March 1st. He will also have two concurrent exhibits in March, one at Yossi Milo Gallery, in New York, and one at M + B, in Los Angeles, and book signings on March 8th, at Dashwood Books in New York, and March 17th, at Family Books in Los Angeles.
Click-through for a slideshow, and a Q. & A. with Brodie: http://nyr.kr/VwK7lC
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Old Unsingable: Bob Mankoff looks at how our cartoonists have taken on the national anthem over the years: http://nyr.kr/WBRJhD
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Senatus Decadens
In today’s Daily Comment, George Packer looks at the decaying Senate and considers whether filibuster reform can save it: “The Senate is in a prolonged, self-induced coma. It does not produce creative legislation. It does not inspire important debate. It is not responsive to key national problems. Its pretense of institutional dignity is so battered that junior senators openly mock it.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/UrSAlC
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In this context of the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Brian L. Frank’s new body of photographs, “Dreamscape,” made during a six-week-long road trip across the country this past summer, are particularly resonant. Frank sought to explore the notion of American identity in a journey that took him from Virginia to his home base of San Francisco, against the backdrop of the Presidential race. “I kept thinking about how politicians always said the same things and tried to use Americans’ views of themselves to their advantage,” Frank told me. “And I began looking for the commonalities in this shared sense of the American ‘self.’ ”
Despite the drastic changes between landscapes and cultures across the United States, Frank believes that, in the end, there is more that holds the country together than cleaves it apart.
-Elissa Curtis. Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/12YTsmC
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Cartoon by Farley Katz. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/XXdHBA
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Cartoon by Paul Noth. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/TTAMi6
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I took a spin through the archives and—lo and behold, I discovered something quite fascinating: today, even the richest among us do not eat Thanksgiving like the rich of 1900.
Click-through to read Macy Halford on the time Mark Twain tried to move Thanksgiving, and for more on Thanksgiving menus in 1900.
