Express
In Conversation
The Mea Culpa of Gentrification: Danny Hoch with Williams Cole
Danny Hoch’s new one-man show, Taking Over, starts its run at the Public Theater on November 7th. Taking Over is comprised of diverse characters of different race and class, including Hoch as himself, who embody the dilemmas and problems of gentrification in Brooklyn.
Risky Business
By Paul MattickThe current neo-Keynesian critiques fail to confront the actual state of affairs facing global capitalism.
Some Keys to Obama’s Success
By Theodore HammThe meteoric rise of Barack Obama is already the stuff of mythology.
Learning from the “Malaise”: a speech by President Jimmy Carter
By Jimmy CarterThe following is Jimmy Carter’s July 1979 “crisis of confidence” speech. In an earlier draft, the speech referred to the “malaise” the nation then faced amidst a declining economy and an energy crisis.
Excerpt from Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
By Amara LakhousGladiator is a prickly racist who pees in the elevator of his apartment building off Rome’s Piazza San Vittorio. He’s murdered, and the police consider the prime suspect to be Amedeo, a big-hearted neighbor who knows the city’s streets like the back of his hand.
Andrzej Wajda: Poland and the Screens of History
By Alan LockwoodOn October 17, the Film Society of Lincoln Center opened “Truth or Dare,” a month-long Andrzej Wajda retrospective. Wajda (pronounced VY-da) is among cinema’s great living auteurs, and spent decades cannily steering script proposals and finished works past Poland’s Communist-era censor bureau.
Art You Can Believe In
By Eric TriantafillouIn 1999, at the height of the WTO protests, someone scrawled “We Are Winning!” on a wall in downtown Seattle. Framed by a cloud of tear gas and a phalanx of cops in riot-gear, this message had a defiantly utopian tone, reminiscent of “Under the paving stones, the beach,” which was written on Parisian walls just over thirty years earlier.
Games Without Frontiers
By Gabriel ThompsonLast spring, Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal moved into a cordoned area set up in the back of a Chicago art gallery, where he would remain for one month. The makeshift cell contained a computer, desk, bed, lamp, coffee table, and stationary bike (which, like most stationary bikes, went untouched).
America’s Downfall: Ron Suskind and the Years After Sept. 11
By Justin JouvenalAs the Iraq War loomed in 2003, British intelligence launched a daring, eleventh-hour mission to determine whether Saddam Hussein actually possessed the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush Administration claimed Iraq had.
Dark Youth
By Nicole RobsonAlthough the need for stricter gun control doesn’t take center stage in Jonathan Fast’s nonfiction debut, Ceremonial Violence, it is an unshakable co-star in this harrowing observation on the causes and effects of “SR” (school rampage) shootings.
Start ’Em Young
By Abigail KramerOkay, who would win a fight between Mickey Mouse and Baby Elmo? Or, better yet, imagine a drunken brawl between all the residents of Sesame Street and the original Disney characters:
Interview with Sean Wilsey
By Jed LipinskiSean Wilsey is the author of the memoir Oh the Glory of It All (Penguin, 2005) and the co-editor, with Matt Weiland, of the newly released State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, which features original writing on all fifty states by the U.S.’s finest novelists, journalists, and essayists. Rail contributor Jed Lipinski recently met with Mr. Wilsey to discuss his new book.
In Conversation
The Mea Culpa of Gentrification: Danny Hoch with Williams Cole
Danny Hoch’s new one-man show, Taking Over, starts its run at the Public Theater on November 7th. Taking Over is comprised of diverse characters of different race and class, including Hoch as himself, who embody the dilemmas and problems of gentrification in Brooklyn.
New Image, New Reality
By David Levi StraussI felt early on, from age ten or so, that a big part of politics was emotional, and had everything to do with the collective imagination and memory.
