As an introduction to the progress of colonization and the horrors that white people have inflicted on BIPOC, Exterminate All the Brutes achieves its admirable mission.
Book Commentary: Literary Legacies — Children’s Literature
2020 and 2021 saw the deaths of five titans of children’s and young adult literature. Here’s to revisiting old “classics” and discovering new ones.
April Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Arts Reconsideration: The 1971 Project — Celebrating a Great Year in Music (April Entry)
Arts Fuse writers continue their countdown of great music celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the list includes Marvin Gaye, Link Wray, David Bowie, Jean Knight, and The Rolling Stones.
Book Review: “Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home”
Endpapers is an invaluable gift to literature, mainly but not only for the quotations, details, and beguilingly written scenes of publisher Kurt Wolff’s life scattered throughout
Book Review: “Last Chance Texaco” — Rickie Lee Jones Remembers
Of all the biographies of female musicians I’ve read in the past year, Last Chance Texaco is the most transparent about the vagaries of fame.
Opera CD Review: Two Splendid World-Premiere Recordings Rediscover an Exotic Master of Song — Reynaldo Hahn
Attention is being paid today to talented composers who have been sidelined or disdained because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Reynaldo Hahn qualifies on several counts.
Film Review: “Violation” – Rethinking Revenge
Violation utilizes extreme violence not to revel in a revenge fantasy but to deconstruct the genre’s militantly feminist appeal — “kill your rapist” — as a self-destructive endeavor offering no catharsis whatsoever.
Film Review: “Lapsis” — A Satirical Sci-Fi Send-Up of the Gig Economy
This new satirical sci-fi fable is perfect for home streaming to channel (or perhaps exacerbate) your gnawing anxieties at a world slipping into anti-human automation and free-market desperation.
Book Review: “Klara and the Sun” — Dystopia Yes, But There’s Hope
Klara and the Sun is a dystopian novel worth recommending: it is a thought-provoking joy to read.