She says, everything happens somewhere. Directs those eyes like lighthouse beams someplace west. Doesn’t find what she needs. Looks at her feet. What she is out here: alone. It’s not so bad. When he landed he was only sixteen and piloting a light craft. One wing bent earthward and the old man slumping. Alone among … Read more
A long time ago, a lifetime ago, really, I rented a lovely summer house by the sea. Not exactly by the sea, but close enough, and it had a big pool, and five bedrooms and a sunroom and an English box garden and you could see the ocean from a widow’s walk on the roof. … Read more
Every Christmas when I was a child, much of my extended family would gather at my grandparents’ farm outside a small town in Illinois. My own family would usually arrive early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and many other relatives who lived nearby would come out to the farm for dinner that night. My … Read more
This program of cutting-edge, contemporary classical music for amplified cello isn’t likely to give Yo-Yo Ma a run for his royalties, but might be the perfect antidote for the benumbing holiday hubbub. Cellist Lauren Radnofsky made her Carnegie Hall debut last year, premiering a Brad Lubman composition. Now she will be conducted by Lubman in … Read more
Nearly five years ago, drummer Matt Wilson brought a quartet into a fledgling, soon-to-be shuttered jazz nook called Brilliant Corners in downtown St. Paul and blew about sixty listeners away with music that blended visceral skronk with the sort of exotically forceful swing that could summon forth dancing elephants. Now former Brilliant Corners proprietor Jeremy … Read more
Tegan and Sara have a quirky combo of high-concept modifiers to grab your attention—they’re lesbian twin sisters from Calgary—but their strengths are much more mundane and potent than that. Their latest, The Con, retains a handcrafted, DIY spirit, but the vocals are less girlish and the arrangements less cheesy than their 2004 breakthrough, So Jealous. … Read more
How many anarchist punk bands from Gainesville, Florida, actually get better with age? The only one that matters thus far certainly has. Worthy heirs to Bad Religion if not The Clash, Against Me! have always curlicued their snarl with a knowing smirk—“Cliché Guevara” is a song title from back in 2003. But this year’s New … Read more
America may have spent decades fighting the evils of communism, but with The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein shows us the scary side of the free market. “Disaster capitalism,” the idea at the center of Klein’s new book, employs a simple yet sinister formula: disaster strikes, the public panics, and the … Read more
At this point Bill Holm probably qualifies as a literary lion. He looks the part, certainly (Garrison Keillor has described him as “the tallest radical humorist in the Midwest”), and has a pretty unconventional lifestyle by Minnesota lit standards. Holm is an outsized personality, yet he’s also something of an outstate recluse and a rambler. … Read more