This is an entertaining comedy of manners, a sophisticated satire told from the point of view of a feminist professor who is not afraid of committing transgressions in our politically correct age.
Book Review: “The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon” — A New Chapter in the American Story?
What a cruel hoax: the middle class suburban lifestyle, a proud achievement of postwar America and the envy of peoples throughout the world (in no small part due to Mad Men glamorization), contains the very seeds of our demise. If demise is where this is heading.
Rock Preview: Gov’t Mule — Very Much on the Move
“One of the positives to come out of this whole [pandemic lockdown] experience is that everyone found out what is important in their lives. Those of us who love music realized just how special it is.”
Book Review: “The Quiet Before”– How Our Conversations Set the Boundaries of Our Thinking
This superb book about adventures in radical thinking is less about tracking incendiary ideas to their obscure sources than about the various media used to ferment and transmit them.
Visual Arts Review: The Supportive Imaginary — Weaves and Grids
Grids come into these woven pieces with a strange humility, disarming us with repurposed materials and precious handiwork, domestic scenes and visionary tales.
World Music Album Review: Bassist Alune Wade’s Brilliant “Sultan” — A Global Patchwork Quilt
Sultan has a solid lock on my year-end best of 2022 list. Let’s make the world a little smaller and make this album a hit.
August Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Visual Arts Review: “Mary Ann Unger: To Shape a Moon from Bone” — A Problematic Reevaluation
Are visitors supposed to feel some sort of guilty pleasure if they find Mary Ann Unger’s Across the Bering Strait powerfully mesmeric?
Visual Arts Remembrance: Pop Art Icon Claes Oldenburg Dead at 93
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s work can be found in the collections of major modern art museums throughout the United States and Europe.
Book Review: “Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld” — A Tale of Mobsters and Musicians
Guitarist Eddie Condon quotes a mobster on jazz: “…it’s got guts and it don’t make you slobber.”