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Conservative Criticism, Discouraging Difference
Renata Adler, interviewed by The Believer, on contemporary literary criticism: “More like a race to join the herd of received ideas and agreement.” And Sheila Heti, interviewed in Numero Cinq, on...
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On Fraggle Rock's Death Obsession and the Art of the Supercut
Everyone knows that beloved ’80s kids show Fraggle Rock was all about two things: a theme song that surely ranks on many “Top 5 best TV intros” lists, and death. Wait, death? Well, yeah—at least,...
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Sarah Erdreich on Life After Roe and a New Generation of Activism
“I am not a Nazi.” With that statement, Sarah Erdreich opens Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, her new book exploring the past, present, and future of the United States...
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On Suicide, Wendy O. Williams, and the Art of Life
Wendy O. Williams killed herself 15 years ago this Saturday. She left presents for her partner, Rod Swenson, including noodles he liked and seeds for salad greens, as well as a few notes: “My feelings...
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All the Bees Are Dying and We Don't Know Why
Bees are kind of like migrant workers; they live in ramshackle shared housing, get trucked around to fields and orchards all over North America, and our food economy depends on them. An estimated 30...
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Goodbye, Roger Ebert, Upwardly Mobile Poetry, Sally Draper and the NYT
It’s sad to note the death of a man who taught a generation the critical value of their thumbs and reviewed over 200 films a year for nearly half a centurty. Roger Ebert, you were right; you’re not...
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Room 237: On The Shining's Mysteries and the Theatre of Kubrick
For a long time, I resisted Stanley Kubrick’s films because when young men of my acquaintance talked of them (and it was always young men, yes) they did so with a sort of thoughtless superiority that...
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The Last Soldier of Cinema: Ebert's Legacy
Others might be said to have originated or established the art of film criticism, but Roger Ebert made it popular—even, for a period of time, essential. To say that this was his life’s work is to...
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Even Mascots Get the Blues: Baseball's Opening-Week Anxieties
For many, Major League Baseball’s opening day is a breath of fresh air, a relaxing time of hope and optimism, but for others it can be very stressful. As the year’s first full weekend of games...
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The Grotesque and Lonely World of Leviathan
Every week or so, Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Litovitz have a movie date. Then they talk about the movie. Discussed this week: Leviathan (2012) by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, a documentary...
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Week in Review: Night Walk Edition
Every Sunday members of the Hazlitt staff and the occasional guest share what was notable about their week—online and off.Jordan Ginsberg, Senior EditorI sleep like dogshit. Well, to be specific, I...
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Nature’s Frankenstein: The Clark Fork River’s Disturbing Makeover
If you saw A River Runs Through It (you did, and you cried—don’t deny it), you saw Brad Pitt standing waist-deep in the glorious canyon of a Montana river, casting a fly-fishing rod out over what...
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Jokes and Poets, Mad Men and Certainty
Here are two pieces on jokes, because they're on my mind: Alicia Louise Merchant's take on comedy and cancer, and a supremely touching account of a man who left some punchlines behind.Dennis Johnson,...
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Taiye Selasi: Writing Displacement and Getting Over the Agony of Being...
The 20th century belonged to nomads and optimists. With barely an idea and the means, hordes uprooted their lives in one place for a chance to try elsewhere. Immigration is a study, an improbably vast...
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What Bioshock Infinite Gets Right About Racism
Spoilers within.An early scene in Bioshock Infinite provides a good litmus test for assholes. You are handed a baseball and told you’ve won a raffle. The prize is the first throw at a public stoning...
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Mad Men: Plus Ça Change
The sight of Roger Sterling laid out on a psychiatrist’s couch isn’t the most striking image Mad Men has ever composed, but it’s maybe one of the most shocking. This is a show, after all, that...
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Somewhere in Dreamland
The other night I had a dream I was on a mountain in the rain. This could mean one of two things: (a) I was remembering the time when I was on a mountain in the rain, in Banff, two years ago, or (2)...
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Kurt Cobain vs. Anti-Drone Hoodies
Greetings! I write to you from a hotel in Los Angeles, the centre of the artistic universe, the birthplace of the great Shia LaBeouf, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. A lot of amazing stuff has...
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Michael Lista: Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
Shelf Esteem is a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors, and other word lovers, as told to Emily M. Keeler. This week’s shelf belongs to Michael Lista, who is the poetry...
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Simone Schmidt on Songwriting as a Vehicle for Hope, Visions, and Despair
The last time I saw Simone Schmidt sing was during 2012’s Poor Pilgrim, an annual all-day show traversing Toronto Island. There were a capella folk songs inside St. Andrew-by-the-Lake Church; later...
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