art. literature. commentary.
“With a narrative that explicitly portrays Hedwig’s gender as a conscious construction and a finale that questions the purpose of individual stardom, ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ enacts a transgressive, queer divadom.”
Read Robert Stinner’s breakdown of divas in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” now on our website!
Permanent Volta (Nightboat, 2021), Rosie Stockton’s astounding debut, takes on the sonnet and the sestina, subjection and subjectivity, Sappho plus Marx, then Virgil and why not Lacan. We spoke about the book via Zoom in August 2021. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. David Brazil: Permanent Volta doesn’t have a lot of […]
Phil recommended I visit the Glyptothek as we sat together on a bench in Munich’s Eastern Cemetery. “This has nothing to do with what we will be talking about,” he said, “but they have ancient sculptures with missing arms and legs. They are hundreds of years old and have been destroyed.” I visited the museum […]
Seventy-five years ago, Carson McCullers published her most recognizable novel, The Member of the Wedding. I was dismayed to realize recently that I’d never read it. The Member of the Wedding feels like something I should have read in high school English class – junior year, when we read Flannery O’Connor, Emily Dickinson and The […]
Dating sims, first-person shooters, life simulators—video games give us ritual spaces for vicarious expression. They let us hold things we cannot otherwise hold. A few days ago, I thought about Robin, a girl I fell in love with in college, for the first time in a long time. Though she was the same year as […]
I’m waiting for my Starbucks order, carpooling back from a weekend wine tasting in Santa Maria County for a friend’s birthday. One of my friends sends me a New York Times Magazine article, “The Beauty of 78.5 Million Followers,” shooting dopamine through my slackened neural pathways as I scroll Instagram in the coffee shop. I […]
My dad is 92 years old. Despite age, Pops is doing well. He drives like a youngster. I believe he drives better than me. I’m old too, by the way. Each morning, he negotiates crossword puzzles and gives them what-for. It’s a rare occasion when he asks for my help. “Whip It band?” He […]
More than a year into the pandemic, the world remains caught in the grip of a bleak future. That has brought uncertainty, isolation, and, for an unfathomable number of us, the end of everything we have ever known. It has been harrowing and relentless, exacerbated by the fact that we have been severed from one […]
In the spring of 1981, New Wave group the Necessaries piled into their tour van and set out from New York City toward Washington D.C. to play a gig with R.E.M. At the time, they were signed to the Warner Brothers subsidiary Sire Records, had just finished their first studio album, and were well-received by […]
“Your skills are not what we need at this time.” Five years ago, my boss, Laura, not her real name, terminated my employment with these words. Face-to-face in an office the size of a coat closet, sat this middle-aged white woman, Chief Development Officer at the foundation, and I, former Director of Cause Marketing and […]
