The American Reader

A Conversation with Artist Nicky Nodjoumi

With a twist. The problem is people. When they come into power, no matter what, they do bad things. The paintings are generally about people in power, it doesn’t matter what country…

Whatever Happened to New York City Opera?

By Ryan Tracy × Criticism

Despite the fairly well documented “missteps” the company has taken on its way from being the second major opera outfit in New York City to nonexistence, there persists a subtext of disbelief. Everyone is asking: How could this have happened? What could have been done to prevent it?

Self-Consuming Cinema: On "Last Year at Marienbad"

By Ryan Ruby × Criticism

But rather than a work that is resistant to interpretation, “Marienbad” actively invites it: “Marienbad” leads the viewer through a number of interpretive stages, each one as unsatisfying as the last…

Long Meadow From the Print

By Jon Cotner × Fiction & Poetry

I love retrieving stray balls Kierkegaard / longed to be useful he didn’t feel all that useful in his room thinking / about Christianity and would walk the streets wanting to open doors / [voices] and I feel splendid returning balls to groups of friends or / bounded fields

Review: Thomas Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge”From the Print

By David Auerbach × Criticism

Unlike his peers, Mr. Pynchon never started from a set conception of the world, but from the detritus of pop culture, science, and art. He did not plot so much as pattern his novels, setting up complementary and clashing resonances and dichotomies in such a way as to refuse any reductive analysis of the narrative…

“A Question of Silence”: Why We Don't Read Or Write About Education From the Print

By Houman Harouni × Criticism

If in recent years one type of writing has managed to at least hint at the genuine problem in education, it is the adolescent fantasy novel. […] The structuring desire of every novel of this sort is the same: a well-resourced school that offers a meaningful education. The anxiety that eventually takes over the story is also the same: that the school will turn out to be just as authoritarian, just as banal and arbitrary as its real-life counterparts.

“To Get Our Message Before the Public, We’ve Had To Kill People”

By Thomas Ian Campbell and Michael Lipkin × Criticism

During his trial, Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and his fears of technological oppression were deemed “non-bizarre delusions.” Accordingly, Kaczynski’s views received little serious consideration in major media outlets. In recent years, however, his ideas have seen something of a reevaluation.