[contextly_auto_sidebar id="TzbKntNFyZcSQHgIrdjr9IhXNfnnrZ7q"] A timely and engaging new book by the labor historian Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence, contrasts the way Americans responded to the first Gilded Age -- with protests, class rhetoric, even violence -- to the situation today, where movements like Occupy come and go and populist energy is directed not against capital but … [Read more...]
What Makes a City Beautiful ?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="krjjjXo4RZIvrWEAQUieiD1G6Y9vbRUb"] IT'S all just a matter of opinion, isn't it? Nobody can agree on aesthetics, right? The Anglo-Swiss writer Alain de Botton demolishes these myths and others in a video on "How to Make an Attractive City." Slate has a fascinating story on the topic, and breaks out the writer's six criteria for urban beauty. By the part that … [Read more...]
What Is a “Subversive” Artist, Anyway?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="L8uqg7ERM237iPSVXdaL6TdXt2SjQlsL"] AFTER a while, I get tired of all the jive around certain terms. "Disruption" is one; "empowerment," another. ("Innovate" seems to be headed for corporate sponsorship.) The latest infuriating one is the way the word "subversive" has been turned into a marketing strategy and a straight-faced description of Lady Gaga and Jeff Koons. … [Read more...]
Michael Lewis and the Wolves of Wall Street
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="E5qNaI36069IPjIw5lgPIe3Zh8gOxJpu"] FEW writers have penetrated the macho, risk-taking culture of finance like journalist Michael Lewis, who worked on Wall Street and in the City of London in the late '80s. His first book, the colorful, high-octane Liar's Poker, has just been reissued for its 25th anniversary, and it describes the birth of the sort of casino … [Read more...]
When Music Sounds Like a Cash Register: Taylor Swift
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="z9vqtTIKWYYE4qjmn9I73sMygRd2LrTi"] WHAT happens when a society gets obsessed with those who win at the capitalist game, when marketing becomes the new religion, and the gatekeepers of art and music stop caring ab0ut the fields in which they labor but get hypnotized by the machinery of star-making? We get "artists" like Jeff Koons or Taylor Swift. The onetime … [Read more...]
What Killed Adulthood? Pop Culture or Capitalism?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jery8F5jteMew95L1w4tWKmHZdFvaBDv"] ONE of the smarter back and forths over the last week or so has been the response to A.O. Scott's essay "The Post-Man," on how genuine adulthood has seeped out of American culture. He's taken the usual hits for being a nostalgic, entitled, puritanical white man -- charges I'm sure he could see coming a mile away -- most of which … [Read more...]