September 2007
The Long Puzzling Absence of Junot Díaz
Juno Díaz’ Drown was as impressive a debut as any in the 90s. Eleven years later, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is finally on the shelves. Sam Sacks reviews what the burden of expectation on the author’s shoulders has produced.
Second Glance: Do You Know Squarepusher?
In this regular feature, Adam Golaski revisits Intelligent Dance (or “laptop”) Music, discovering unity and poise in a Squarepusher album which critics have short-sightedly misfiled.
A Death in the Family
Almost a century ago, the squabbles of one privileged family decimated all of Europe. Steve Donoghue investigates Catrine Clay’s impossibly comprehensive retelling in King, Kaiser, Tsar:
Vermont Casting
A poem by Ravi Shankar
Chicken Little 2.0
Wikipedia is destroying our culture; so are YouTube, MySpace, and Google; and all your damn blogs, too—or so says Andrew Keen. Greg Waldmann exposes Cult of the Amateur, and the amateur authorship behind the screed.
The Songs, the Singers, and the Sung-To
Myths and legends reveal the most about the people who re-imagine them. Gardner Linn explores two provocative reshapers in the music-driven graphic novels Stagger Lee and Phonogram: Rue Brittania.
Just So Stories
Should the brain-cracking complexity of modern science be explained in pithy one-liners? Steve Donoghue says no, even as he yields to the charm of Ira Flatow’s Present at the Future.
Absent Friends: Our Jolly Round Whirling Earth
Gun-and-net-toting naturalists seldom produce a better writer than William Beebe. In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the science writing of a more invasive age.
To Wider, Stranger Worlds
Virginia Woolf buried the late John Evelyn with a single review. Now Leah Lambrusco lets us know whether Gillian Darley’s resurrected the diarist in John Evelyn, Living for Ingenuity. (Yes, he’s the other restoration diarist).
Quiz: Split Season!
Our monthly quiz celebrates (and deplores) the dual nature of September.
This month’s photograph, “Sandcastle,” comes to us from James A. Crossman, whose work can be viewed at http://www.jamescrossman.com/gallery
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