The Theater World Has Never Understood Lorraine Hansberry
If you remember A Raisin in the Sun as a play about a family that decides to buy a house, you might be surprised that the author thought its crucial...
Why Maus Was Banned
In the 1970s, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman jotted down a thought in a notebook. “Maybe Western civilization has forfeited any right to literature with a big ‘L,’” he wrote. “Maybe...
A New Theory of American Power
A national mood disorder afflicts America, causing wild swings between mania and despair, superhuman exertion and bruised withdrawal. We overdo our foreign crusades, and then we overdo our retrenchments, never...
Whose Midlife Crisis Is It, Anyway?
The television series Fleishman Is in Trouble begins upside down, with the camera soaring over an inverted Manhattan skyline—squat brick buildings in the top half of the frame, hazy blue...
Ode to Not Watching the World Cup
I don’t want to overstate this. I don’t want to say that by watching World Cup 2022, held in Qatar, on your personal entertainment device, you’re stepping over the bodies...
Tár Has an Answer to Art’s Toughest Question
This story contains major spoilers for Tár.As someone who writes about art and artists for a living, I confess that I find no question more exhausting than “Can we separate...