rakemag The opening of Heartland could not have been timed better. With winter approaching, our primitive souls yearn for the comfort food that will sustain us through the next six months. Lenny Russo, the former executive chef at W.A. Frost, has crafted a North American Midwest cuisine (who knew?) consisting of all locally grown produce, nuts … Read more
Many readers write to ask about Rake contributor Jem Casey. He is modest, and unlikely to speak up for himself, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to answer a few questions that frequently come up. Under several different pen names, Jem Casey has written stories for magazines like the Oxford American, Ploughshares, the Prairie … Read more
The persistent claim that it’s the “Greatest Movie Ever” leaves us a little cold—it seems a little too easy to put this at the top of the list, a safe choice nobody can really argue with. And the Rosebud mystery that bookends the drama seems more heavyhanded and gimmicky every time we watch it. Those … Read more
The Vikings thought the northern lights were the unearthly spirits of Valkyries pointing the way to the warrior’s afterlife in Valhalla. Eskimos thought they were evil spirits who decapitated the heads of children for sport. A former BBC documentarian tells a true story no less strange and tragic in The Northern Lights . Turn of … Read more
I’m sitting on the dusty steps of a Kodak camera shop on Bai Se Road, just down the street from my apartment, looking through some black and white photographs. They’re the first pictures I’ve taken in China and I’m so excited to see them that I can’t be bothered with getting on my bike and … Read more
Though I agree with Clinton Collins’ main point, that often blacks use the “Uncle Tom” accusation too broadly [Free the Jackson Five!, September], I think his analysis of why it occurs is too crude. Mr. Collins errs greatly by using Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as an example of someone who was called out by … Read more
I found Jon Zurn’s recent article on the state of the arts and opportunities for artists in this area very much on-the-mark. There are so many talented persons in the Cities that are not being shown or collected and might be if more of the public would take time for a closer look at what … Read more
When reading your article on Ken Pentel, the Green Party candidate for governor [“It Ain’t Easy Being Green,” September], I felt a deep sense of envy and awe for Minnesotans. Out here in California, we don’t have public policies which encourage desperately needed third parties to participate in government. Third-party candidates in California don’t have … Read more
It’s been 20 years since Milan Kundera first published The Unbearable Lightness of Being and became literature’s equivalent of a rock star. It was the kind of book that American college students thrive on—Eurotrash romanticism, haphazard pop-philosophizing, and lots of adulterous affairs with mysterious Women of the Warsaw Pact. If you wore black back then, … Read more
It’s fittingly ironic that Umberto Eco finds such rich soil in which to plant his postmodern mysteries back in the Middle Ages. In his fourth novel, 12th-century Italy is a backdrop for the tale of Baudolino, an Italian peasant who becomes the adopted son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, known as Barbarossa. Mixing … Read more