“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”
― P.D. James
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Before Soho was boho, there was Covent Garden. Its theaters, bordellos, and back alleys gave rise to a modern archetype: the poverty-stricken artist...First Bohemians
What could be more doomed in America than a socialist magazine? Dissent started in 1954 with enough money to put out four issues. Sixty years later... Dissent almost as old as Vaclav Havel
What could be more doomed in America than a socialist magazine? Dissent started in 1954 with enough money to put out four issues. Sixty years later... Dissent almost as old as Vaclav Havel
Our collective sense of irony, it seems, has never been in better health. We say, “How ironic!” as a politician’s hypocrisy is exposed; we laugh knowingly as Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter egos eviscerate their prey with perfect Socratic irony; we feel keenly the dramatic irony as Romeo takes his own life, thinking Juliet has killed herself. Irony, in all its forms, pervades our lives. Irony pervades our lives, but it tends to fall flat on the page. That’s an old problem. In the 17th century, the Rev. John Wilkins invented the “irony mark”... Hard core ironies
Big data erects “invisible barbed wire” around our lives, says Evgeny Morozov. The more we reveal, “the denser but more invisible this barbed wire becomes”...Iron curtains and barbed wires