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Claire Messud Gets Angry
“How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody knows about that.”Thus opens Claire Messud’s latest novel, The Woman Upstairs. Its narrator, Nora Eldridge, an almost-middle aged elementary school...
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Lifting Weights: On Jason Collins’ Humble Heroism
This article orginally appeared on The Classical.Bruce Herman, the man who writes the text for more or less every trading card printed and sold by Topps, lives in Blacksburg, Va., with his wife,...
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Why the World Pays Attention When America is Attacked
The news cycle for the Boston Marathon bombings continues to spin. Authorities have now arrested three more suspects, a development covered in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Vietnam, Egypt and...
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How Colours Colour Your Ethics?
Recently, Americans have been hunkered down at the extreme edges of the spectrum of opinion, throwing tomatoes. Whether the issue is gun control, environmental policy, or foreign affairs, the U.S. is...
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Filmmaker Les Blank: Acts of Accidental Remembrance
Les Blank passed away on April 7th, 2013, at the age of 77. The three-part retrospective screening at the current Hot Docs film festival, presented as an award for Outstanding Achievement, was never...
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Ozzy Osbourne Searches for God
There’s a Kids In The Hall bit, in the style of a ‘50s newsreel, which tackles a question that’s been dogging mankind since the invention of kneeling: “Yes,” we’re told, “God did exist. He died. He...
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Cash Cab Question-Writer Kirk Heron’s Trivial Pursuits
Kirk Heron is a comedian and writer who told me that he would be unfit for my Shelf Esteem column here at Hazlitt because he only keeps one book at home, and it’s a single collected volume of Lord of...
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Filipino Basketball Comes to Whitehorse
This article originally appeared on The Classical.Gavin Diore is doubled over with his hands on his hips, sweat gleaming on the tip of his nose. The searing white fluorescent lighting unique to high...
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Who Gets to be a Music Video Auteur?
Cinema began with an industrial ritual: 46 seconds of workers leaving the Lumière brothers’ factory in Lyon, women playfully tugging at each other’s dresses, a large dog doing what hyperactive dogs...
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Send Sudafed: Talking with Tavon White, Life Coach
Although the story of the Black Guerilla Family ringleader Tavon White impregnating four different prison guards and fathering five children with them, all while he was incarcerated in a Maryland jail...
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Show’s Over: On Alias, and the Perils of Concert-Promoting
The life of a concert promoter is tough—it isn’t easy like some people think. Like most music industry jobs, it sounds lofty and vaguely unreal, like “record producer” or “band manager” or the label...
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The Offline is the New Pastoral
A year ago, Paul Miller believed he was being corrupted by the Internet. But as it turns out, his enemy isn’t technology; it’s William Wordsworth.In 2012, Miller, a writer for tech site The Verge,...
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On Jason Collins, Brittney Griner, and Consensual Outness
Just when we thought we were moving past the old gay tropes, with same-sex marriage almost a decade old in Canada and the tenth state in the union to our south signing it into law this week, Jason...
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Moral Courage, American Brits, and the Not-So-Great Gatsby
So I suppose this is where I should come clean and admit that while I enjoyed reading both The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises, I’ve also long thought that Fitzgerald and Hemingway take up a much...
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Standard Apparel: Our Clothes Don't Fit and They're Falling Apart
The only piece of clothing I’ve ever had made for me was my prom dress. It’s long and vampy and flaming scarlet, like something Rita Hayworth would wear. It’s still hanging in the closet of my old...
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Karen Russell Comes Out From the Swamp
Before publishing her latest collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell spent ten years in a make-believe swamp, inspired by her childhood home near Miami. This rich, consistent world held...
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Mother’s Day Gift Ideas vs. the New Darius Rucker Album
Quick: name a star who’s bigger than Tom Cruise, Scarlett Johansson and Beyoncé combined. Having trouble? You shouldn’t. The answer is obvious: mama! Sunday is Mother’s Day, and in honour of the...
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Made in China
The defendant has misplaced his lawyer. He stands behind the long wooden table at the front of Courtroom #300 and lifts his hands towards the fluorescent lighting, his shoulders shrugging around his...
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Lauren Kirshner: Reading for Scent
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 Lauren Kirshner, the author of the...
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Fidel Castro: Revolutionary, Dictator, Sportswriter
A few weeks before Jay-Z and Beyoncé landed in Havana to celebrate their anniversary last month, another far less celebrated New York icon visited Cuba. His name is Rey Ordoñez, and it was his first...
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