In this installment of Mondays with the Supremes, we look ideological purity, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Continue reading Mondays with the Supremes: Part VII: The Ideological Litmus Test
In this installment of the Critic’s Notebook, Karl Wolff looks at the intersections between social media and new technology on sites like Riffle, LibraryThing, and Facebook. Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Riffle, LibraryThing, and Connectivity
This week at CCLaP, Karl Wolff reviews “The Cage” by Gordon Weiss, a former UN worker who writes about the human rights disaster of Sri Lanka in its battle with the Tamil Tigers. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: The Cage, by Gordon Weiss
Karl Wolff reviews Firefly by Severo Sarduy (release date, March 2013), a writer praised by Roland Barthes, for his verbal richness and dreamlike evocation of pre-Castro Cuba. Continue reading Translation Tuesdays: Firefly, by Severo Sarduy
This week I review “The Passage of Power,” Robert Caro’s 4th volume in his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: The Passage of Power, by Robert Caro
The final volume of Kissinger’s memoirs details his tenure in the Ford Administration, along with my analysis on our current foreign policy situation and what conservatism has become. Continue reading Years of Renewal (1999) by Henry Kissinger
Today in Karl Wolff’s CCLaP essay series “On Being Human,” it’s ‘The Culture’ novels by Iain Banks, in which humans, aliens, and machines all live in a post-scarcity utopia. Banks’s novels follow eccentrics and troublemakers in a society where humans can switch gender, become aliens, and even become machines. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: the Culture
A limited-run series where I review three books about the Supreme Court of the United States, exploring its historical and ideological conflicts, and the transformations it wrought upon law and society. This week: Three Supreme Court cases that examine “binding precedent”, race, and national security. Continue reading MONDAYS WITH THE SUPREMES, PART III: KOREMATSU, BROWN, AND PADILLA
After an overlong hiatus, “The Art of Reviewing” returns with a profile of Roland Barthes, exploring his the French semiotician and literary critic expanded the subject matter for reviewers, his influence of pop culture studies, and his usefulness in curatorial practice. Continue reading The Art of Reviewing: Roland Barthes
Karl Wolff reviews “Isaac: a modern fable,” by Ivan G. Goldman, in which Lenny, really the Isaac from the Bible, works security for a LA movie mogul and meets Ruth, a struggling academic with an equally troubled past. In this telling, the Biblical Isaac was granted eternal life and youth. He witnesses mankind’s foibles across the centuries, so long as he doesn’t fall in love or land in jail, because then they would discover he’s not like other men. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Isaac: a modern fable, by Ivan Goldman
The Driftless Area Review 