Tag: economics

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A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

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Near the end of his life, Count Leo Tolstoy wrote two lengthy essays on the topic of religion.  Hesperus Press includes these two essays, “A Confession” (1879 – 1882) and “What is Religion, and What Does its Essence Consist of?” (1902).  The edition includes a foreword by novelist and Orange Prize winner Helen Dunmore with an introduction by famed Tolstoy translator Tony Briggs. Tolstoy would revisit the religious theme in “Father Sergius” (written in 1890, published in 1898), an excruciatingly introspective tale of sensual temptation, religious duty, and personal mutilation.  With “A Confession” and “What is Religion?”, Tolstoy works within … Continue reading A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

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Critic's Notebook, film, The Art of Reviewing, The Internet, TV4 Comments

Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part IV

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Nathan Rabin and the Countercanonical Critique The AV Club has carved out a niche of reputable pop cultural criticism.  Nathan Rabin has been profiled before in the Art of Reviewing.  It focused on his unique style and examined his ongoing series My Year of Flops.  Rabin’s bombastic style plays off his subject matter, whether it is a movie that bombed at the box-office or a hip hop review.  Rabin has expanded his critical eye to include country music (Nashville or Bust!) and pop ephemera (THEN! That’s What They Called Music). Movie flops, the NOW That’s What I Call Music! compilations, … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part IV

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part II

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Unpopularity as Popularity: or How to be a hipster. “Every aspect of hipster culture amounts to little more than an elaborate pissing contest.  …  Hipsters ignore rules because they think it will make them look like they don’t care. There is no end result, just a continuous cycle of mediocre indie rock and scruffy looking dudes. By basing their actions on avoiding the mainstream, they are in fact guided by the mainstream.” – “Cracked Topics: Hipster”, Cracked.com You’re not cool enough.  The bands you like aren’t unpopular enough. Hipsters, the annoying quasi-subculture, has its own uses and abuses of unpopularity. … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part II

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

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“In place of a hermeneutrics we need an erotics of art.” – “Against Interpretation” [1964], Susan Sontag Challenges and Non-Responses The job of the critic is, by turns, tastemaker, evangelist, and champion.  The best critics harness the powers of intellection and enthusiasm to inform his or her readership on a work’s merits.  If a work receives more merits than demerits, than, in a roughly mathematical fashion, the creator obtains a “good review.”  This reviewer finds works with “mixed reviews” or polarizing reactions (see Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) most attractive, since “mixed reviews” are not sure things.  A tiny element … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

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Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay Number Zero

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By way of an introduction … “It is simply misleading and vulgar to say of Marx, as Edmund Wilson in To the Finland Station and many others have done, that he was really a latter-day prophet[.]” – “Piety without content,” Susan Sontag [1961] “Marx’s thought marks a watershed.  Its roots reach back to Joachim of Fiore and further, to the inspired utterances of the Old Testament prophets.” – Reasons for Our Rhymes: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of History, R. A. Herrera [2001] “Better dead than Red.” – Anti-communist saying [c. 1950s] Karl Marx is a controversial, misunderstood, and often … Continue reading Essays on Capital, First Series: Essay Number Zero

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Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy (1867), by Karl Marx

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Two years after the American Civil War ended and nearly two decades after revolutions ravaged the European continent, Karl Marx, a secular Jew living in exile in Great Britain, published the first volume of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.  Two more volumes would follow.  The plan involved an outline for six volumes, a monumental undertaking even to someone as prolific as Marx was.  Friedrich Engels would go on to edit and compile the second and third volumes in addition to editing future editions of Volume 1. Volume 1 of Capital can be seen bookending Marx’s fecund writing career.  He … Continue reading Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy (1867), by Karl Marx

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Critic’s Notebook: A Demanding Read, Part II (Non-fiction)

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The act of reading can exact a demanding price from the reader.  If one lacks preparation, he or she can be left in a wallow of ignorance.  Certain titles exist that a reader approaches with caution.  The Cantos of Ezra Pound, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many others.  Non-fiction works also intimidate potential readers.  I am currently reading the second volume of Henry Kissinger’s memoirs, Years of Upheaval, and the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx.  Each extracts certain demands from the reader in its own particular way. Yes, this book actually exists. … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: A Demanding Read, Part II (Non-fiction)

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The Art of Reviewing: Cintra Wilson (Part One)

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Every blog needs a large-scale project. The Art of Reviewing will explore reviewing as an art form and as a valuable element to understanding society.  During this project, I will profile specific reviewers of merit.  Several specific cases also explore other facets of reviewing. Cintra Wilson Cintra Wilson was a columnist at Salon, retail reviewer in the New York Times Fashion & Style section (Critical Shopper), and lately political columnist (the C-Word), appearing in the New Haven Advocate, the Hartford Courant, and the Fairfield Weekly.  Wilson also authored the ferocious cultural commentary entitled A Massive Swelling: celebrity re-examined as a … Continue reading The Art of Reviewing: Cintra Wilson (Part One)

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The Art of Reviewing Special Edition(TM): The 20 Minute “Avatar” Review

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Every blog needs a large-scale project. The Art of Reviewing will explore reviewing as an art form and as a valuable element to understanding society.  During this project, I will profile specific reviewers of merit.  Several specific cases also explore other facets of reviewing. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s making the rounds on Ye Olde Nettertubes.  It’s a twenty-minute review of James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar. Here’s the review, in two parts: *** COMMENTARY This review is a bit long and a bit cynical, but it makes a number of valid points.  It is an artful combination of pop … Continue reading The Art of Reviewing Special Edition(TM): The 20 Minute “Avatar” Review

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Journey to the End of the Night (1932), by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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In the black heart of the Great Depression, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler rose to power, Louis-Ferdinand Cèline set the French literary scene afire with Journey to the End of the Night.  By turns darkly comical, hallucinatory, and picaresque, the novel charts the misadventures of Bardamu.  From the trenches of the First World War to French colonial Africa to New York City and Detroit, Bardamu experiences each place with his own jaundiced eyes.  Eventually he returns back to suburban Paris, a small-time doctor working with impoverished patients.  Bardamu is not alone.  His friend, one Robinson, accompanies him as … Continue reading Journey to the End of the Night (1932), by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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