Out in the wide readership

Jun
27th

Wed

He has often echoed Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, the canonical American speech of reconciliation. It has not occurred to him that our time may be more suited to the House Divided speech, in which Lincoln in 1858 showed why the slavery question was so important it might make the two sides irreconcilable. Obama’s many House United speeches, by contrast, are always about unity for its own sake – a curious idea. Unity for its own sake will capture neither votes nor lasting loyalty among people who crave an explanation of the elements of political right and wrong. Obama likes to say that the truth always lies somewhere ‘in between’. Fair enough at first glance. A tenable compromise between obdurate persons or opposite forces generally lies somewhere in between. But truth is different surely, truth occurs as it occurs, and often one finds it at the extremes.

— David Bromwich

Feb
7th

Tue

As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious despair since they are tranquillized in their despair.

— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Dec
16th

Fri

He’d enter the house and push past the offer of what he called the worst phrase in the English language: “White or Red?” He’d walk into the kitchen, to the small pantry where we keep our own stock of liquor, and help himself to a slug of Johnnie Walker Black.

— David Frum

Dec
14th

Wed

Reflections on the Year In Hip Hop: The Internet Is Your Area Code.

Also contributed write-ups on Destroyer, Big KRIT, and Bill Callahan for Prefix’s Best Albums list.

Dec
7th

Wed

Nov
6th

Sun

jesuisperdu:

william eggleston

Oct
29th

Sat

Civilization is in a sense a matter of feeling shame in the appropriate places.

— Charles Taylor

Sherman’s March

Oct
24th

Mon

Ultimately, the contradiction between our economic and ecological anxieties may only be resolvable by confronting the old political-economic problem of value: what is it, where does it come from, how do you get more of it? Obviously things with prices possess value—but so do bartered goods, public services, personal relationships, unremunerated collective enterprises, free time, and a livable future. It is no evil thing to want the average value of each individual life (as measured by the person living it) to increase year by year, or to want our society to grow more valuable to us over time. Growth and development are the mottos of life at large, only lately appropriated by capital. The fatal error has been to confound prices with values, and to assume that increased resource exploitation is identical with the growth of human or even economic values.

Perhaps the public spectacle of the worst crisis since the 1930s will spur, if not a revolution (ask even the fiercest Marxist and she will say, “The ideological conditions are unripe”), then a new way of thinking about ourselves, and our world. New York just enjoyed the most pleasant summer in recent memory, with temperate days and breezy nights that reminded you you were on an island; and yet that pleasantness was another confusion, a distraction, a patch of random noise within the ever clearer trend.

— Growth Outgrown (N+1)

Oct
23rd

Sun

Oct
11th

Tue

I just think of it as me trying to have as much fun as possible and be as mystified as possible, but responsibly mystified.

— Will Oldham

Oct
5th

Wed

(via ifc)

Sep
29th

Thu

First, for all the breathless headlines from the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington, DC, Europe’s leaders are a long way from a deal on how to save the euro. The best that can be said is that they now have a plan to have a plan, probably by early November. Second, even if a catastrophe in Europe is avoided, the prospects for the world economy are darkening, as the rich world’s fiscal austerity intensifies and slowing emerging economies provide less of a cushion for global growth. Third, America’s politicians are, once again, threatening to wreck the recovery with irresponsible fiscal brinkmanship. Together, these developments point to a perilous period ahead.

—

The Economist

Gulp.

Jul
5th

Tue

Uh Oh, I Think I Like the New Lil B Album — an attempt to appreciate/understand Lil B is up on Prefix

Apr
25th

Mon

In many ways, today’s rap landscape looks like the exact inverse of the world that Big strived to create. Underground and mainstream hip-hop across the board are instead dominated not by an energy but by a disaffected cool, more Jay than Big. Narrative storytelling is out, formless stream of consciousness is in. Beats, rhymes and content are less aggressive than ever. It’s as if Biggie never even existed. This generation digests Big as an icon, not a human. And to do so is to misunderstand him completely.

— The Fader