Without repetition, there is no music. Entire genres—trap; bachata—rely on reworking characteristic instrumentations, rhythms, and beats, beats that are themselves the stuff of repetition. Blues has its signature chord progressions. Disco and its danceable descendants lean into the power of synthesized loops. Harsh or ambient, noise music confidently gazes in on and repeats itself. Themes, […]
Since the beginning of time, the Moon has controlled life on Earth and shepherded the human mind through a spectacular journey of thought, wonder, power, knowledge, and myth. But this frenzied, multifarious, Earthly history disguises the truth of the Moon. As vivid and lively as our history with it has been, the Moon itself is […]
Novelist Jacinda Townsend and writer James Bernard Short join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the movie American Fiction, which is based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett . Townsend and Short discuss how the film addresses race in the publishing industry via its central character, Black author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, […]
Screenshot from the movie “Saltburn” In Saltburn , the backdrops are as mesmerizing and as essential to the plot as the delicate portrayal of the central relationship between Oliver and Felix. The settings are both tight and enclosed, the campus and the country house. These are my favorite settings for novels—discrete locations with groups defined […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Colossus’ is a transitional Sylvia Plath poem. The title poem of the only poetry collection published during her lifetime ( The Colossus , in 1960), it is one of the most accomplished poems in that collection, and in some ways paves the way for the mature poems, written […]
Two prominent novelists have broken with PEN America over the organization’s decision to platform controversial actor and outspoken ceasefire opponent Mayim Bialik, as well as its relative silence on the unfolding genocide in Gaza (which so far has claimed the lives of at least 120 writers, poets , and journalists ). National Book Award finalist […]
From earliest memory, I knew that my aunt worked in book publishing. As an editor of children’s books at a large, corporate publisher, she would send me boxes upon boxes of cast-offs that she’d find around the office. Even before I had learned how to read, I would thumb through these books in my solitude—as […]
ON A VERY chilly Los Angeles evening (I could see my breath and wore a scarf!) I heard Natasha Stagg read from her latest book, Artless: Stories 2019–2023 ( Semiotext(e), 2023), alongside Jackie Wang and Chris Kraus at the Poetic Research Bureau in the Historic Filipinotown neighborhood. The literary trio drew a packed crowd of […]
Lee Sung Jin Kevin Mazur/Getty Images After a packed nine days in which the Netflix dark comedy swept at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards , the show was officially crowned best limited series at the 2023 Emmys on Monday night, with seven additional trophies between the Primetime and Creative Arts ceremonies, including best […]
negative tone words Are you familiar with the concept of negative tone words? The mood and emotion conveyed through writing is a key component of what makes it effective, and tone words are a powerful tool at your disposal. This guide focuses exclusively on one type of tone words – negative tone words . These […]
