The girl in the middle demands our attention. Article continues after advertisement She looks straight at the camera, wrapped tight in a trade blanket that conceals her body. Six white men in military and civilian garb crowd her space, standing to either side of her, symmetrically framing her in the center. None of them look […]
“Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(which was rather late for me)—Between the end of the Chatterley banAnd the Beatles’ first LP.”–Philip Larkin, Annus Mirabilis* Article continues after advertisement An elegiac verse from the patron saint of university librarians rather accurately dates the emergence of the permissive “Sixties,” more a state of mind than an exact decade—a
I first read Hamlet in Jamaica. The bleak daylight surrounding my high school, Happy Grove, was like the faded glow of an old photograph. Rain was expected; it never came. There might have been thunder, or that could just have been the pages turning in unison. Article continues after advertisement This was 1998, the beginning
Ishion Hutchinson on Les Murray’s Sensory, Mozartian Poems Read More »
In my early twenties, I worked one summer as domestic help in a private residence for rich male university students in New York City. As part of our training, we women were taught to close all the doors to all the rooms we entered and follow a strict schedule as we moved around the house
The Future Will be Translated: A Manifesto in Three Lies Read More »
“I attrybute my suksess in life to mi devoshun to spelyng.”–Josh Billings* Article continues after advertisement Simplified spelling looks silly. There’s no getting around that. For most readers today, the mere sight of words like “nolej” or “edukayshun”—or any of the countless others pushed by the “simplified spelling movement” in its centuries-long quest to phoneticize
“A Source of Amyuzmint.” On the Use of Bad Spelling in Early American Comedy Read More »
Giorgio Vasari to Michelangelo Buonarroti Florence, 2 January 1557 This time, my dear Master, I am not writing to you on behalf of the duke to beg you to return to Florence. Alas, it is a very different subject that obliges me to disturb you in your Roman days, which are, I know, so filled
Lexus will go after the BMW i5 and Audi A6 E-tron with a bold new generation of the ES saloon, to be revealed at the Shanghai motor show next week. Expected to gain the option of electric power for the first time, the new Lexus ES is described as a “global flagship model”, confirming that
Lexus ES primed for bold electric reinvention in Shanghai next week Read More »
The Cosmic Library explores massive books in order to explore everything else. Here, books that can seem overwhelming—books of dreams, infinity, mysteries—turn out to be intensely accessible, offering so many different ways to read them and think with them. Season one considered Finnegans Wake; in season two, it was 1,001 Nights; season three, the Hebrew
The Cosmic Library presents The Brothers Karamazov: A Radio Play Read More »
Mercedes-Benz has unveiled a special version of the G-Class that harks back to the 1979 original with a series of historic styling cues. Called the G-Class ‘Stronger than the 1980s’, it swaps the modern car’s clear bonnet indicators for amber-tinted units like those of the original car and gains a set of classic-looking five-spoke alloy wheels
New Mercedes-Benz G-Class harks back to 1980s ancestor Read More »
Best for: Refinement The original Volkswagen Amarok kick-started the craze for lifestyle pick-ups, combining the tough utilitarian qualities of a truck with the interior and exterior finish of an upmarket car. Popular as it was, the Amarok failed to drum up the funds for Volkswagen’s accountants to sign off on development of a second-generation model, which is why
The best pick-up trucks – driven, rated and ranked Read More »
