Tag Archives: style

The Troubling Arousal

Posted on May 11, 2020 by JMN

While I resist drawing lines between pornography and art, if forced to offer a distinction I might say that pornography, like propaganda, wants us to feel a single thing. Art is made of contraries, of ambivalence and ambiguity; it never … Continue reading →

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“Play Like You Don’t Know How”

Posted on May 9, 2020 by JMN

“… Play like you don’t know how to play guitar.” That’s the instruction that John McLaughlin recalls Miles Davis giving him. It was on the occasion of his being pressed precipitately into service to collaborate in Davis’s milestone album “Bitches … Continue reading →

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So Playfully Valorized Seriousness

Posted on May 6, 2020 by JMN

[Wayne Koestenbaum] valorizes the intellectual seriousness of Sontag, and of the poet and translator Richard Howard, but also confesses his attraction to idleness and lassitude. Books are fine and good, but have you tried sex, or doughnuts? So this review … Continue reading →

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Blurred Slur

Posted on April 23, 2020 by JMN

Language is awash in slurs: racist, ethnist, nationalist, sexist, ageist, classist, occupationist, sexual orientationist, “ism-ist,” and so on and so forth. The human race is a slurring race. I’m far from wishing to resurrect offensive words from their just entombment. … Continue reading →

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Move Fast and Fix Things

Posted on April 19, 2020 by JMN

In late January Kara Swisher paid tribute to Clay Christensen, who died that month at age 67. Christensen was a Harvard professor of management whose seminal book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” appeared in 1997. His ideas on “disruptive” technologies influenced the … Continue reading →

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“Forebode”? Verboten!

Posted on April 14, 2020 by JMN

But some religious authorities, too, have acted with anti-adaptive zeal. In my own Catholicism, the diocese of Raleigh, N.C., didn’t just cancel Masses and close churches; it forebode [my bolding] its priests to attempt experiments like drive-through confessions that might … Continue reading →

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Neck-Broken

Posted on April 6, 2020 by JMN

A photo of Henry Adams helped draw me into a review by George F. Will of an anthology of conservative thinkers (“American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition,” Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich). In “The Education of Henry Adams (1907),” Adams … Continue reading →

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Sauerkraut Ice Cream

Posted on April 6, 2020 by JMN

George Will reviews “American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition,” Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich. Being susceptible to typography-based graphics I was drawn in by the illustration. Will’s opening statement added enticement. When assembling an anthology of writings representative of a … Continue reading →

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Latinx Redux

Posted on March 19, 2020 by JMN

Dr. García Peña has been involved in… the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures’ program in Latinx studies [my bolding]. (Latinx is a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American heritage, used commonly in academia.) (Kate Taylor, “Denying a Professor … Continue reading →

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Gerhard Richter Voiced

Posted on March 8, 2020 by JMN

For 60 years, he has treated uncertainty as an ethical duty. … That is the priceless example he offers today’s young artists, whose every mistake or hesitation gets pounced on by digital Savonarolas. So much dogmatism out there, so much … Continue reading →

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