A little more than a decade ago, I wrote an article for The New Yorker about American reading habits, which a number of studies then indicated might be in decline. I was worried about what a shift to “secondary orality”—a Read More …
Lately I have been thinking about one of the first things that I ever wrote for the Internet: a series of interviews with adult virgins, published by the Hairpin. I knew my first subject personally, and, after I interviewed her, Read More …
Before it was the name of a band, “talking heads” was a term in television production: a derogatory term for the low-tech, unimaginative visual approach taken by news broadcasts and talk shows, which would film an ordinary-looking, middle-aged man speaking Read More …
The stars of Netflix’s revival of “Queer Eye” form a basketball team’s worth of cultured fabulosity. There’s Tan France, the fashion expert, fussy and witty; Karamo Brown, the suave sophisticate, who, as the “culture” point person, mostly specializes in heart-to-hearts; Read More …
In seventh grade, my English teacher, Mr. Grubbs, suggested that I audition for a local revival of “Take Me Along,” the 1959 musical adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” He recommended that I read the original, so I checked the Read More …
In an interview with the rapper Kanye West from 2003, shortly before he released “The College Dropout,” West recounted the time he met the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, at a dinner held for students in Beverly Hills, Chicago, when he was Read More …
The stereotype of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl lives on—though, in “Tully,” a new comedy directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, it gets a bewildering new life, in the form of a Manic Pixie Dream Nanny. Charlize Read More …
Some of the most iconic moments, scenes, and performances in the modern cinema were created by Stanley Kubrick, but several of them wouldn’t have been created—at least, not in the same way—if it weren’t for the effort and the sensibility Read More …
Samantha Bee, steaming about politics on “Full Frontal,” is a virtuoso of righteous outrage. John Oliver, fuming behind his desk on “Last Week Tonight,” sputters truth to power. Like those other series, “Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas” is an exercise in Read More …
When I met the poet, critic, and theorist Fred Moten for lunch near Washington Square Park recently, he ordered a hamburger, and asked the waiter to hold the aioli. When the food arrived, it was clear that his request had Read More …