Anthony Burgess is not just A Clockwork Orange. Yes, obviously, A Clockwork Orange matters. It’s famous for a reason. It’s sharp, strange, nasty, unforgettable, and written in a voice that grabs you by the collar almost immediately. It also has the kind of afterlife most novels never get anywhere near: school syllabi, cultural shorthand, the…
People often say Joni Mitchell’s Blue is “poetic,” which is true but also a little lazy. Lots of albums get called poetic. Usually that just means the lyrics are pretty, the mood is serious, or somebody played an acoustic instrument while feeling complicated. None of that really explains why Blue feels so complete, or why…
Alt-country is one of those genre names that sounds useful right up until you try to pin it down too neatly. Then it starts slipping out of your hands, which is honestly part of the appeal. At the most basic level, alt-country is country music that picked up a little extra grit somewhere along the…
Afghan literature deserves better than being treated as background reading for world events. For a lot of readers, Afghanistan first appears through news coverage, war, politics, and the usual shorthand that narrows a place before you’ve even had a chance to hear anyone speak from inside it. That’s part of why reading books from Afghanistan…
Some albums announce what they are in the first thirty seconds. You know the category, the era, the mood, maybe even the sentence you would use to describe them before the side is over. Terry Callier’s What Color Is Love is not that kind of record. The first thing you notice is probably Callier’s voice:…
One of the reasons Dostoevsky still feels so intense is that he never lets moral life stay neat. Some writers give you a clearer sense of things by the end. You finish the novel with a better grip on who was right, who was wrong, and what the whole mess was meant to prove. Dostoevsky…
I wish more people knew that Simple Minds are not just the Breakfast Club band. Yes, of course “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is huge. It deserves to be huge and I still love it. The drum hit still lands, the chorus still lifts, and it will probably be attached to that freeze-frame ending forever….
Mornings can be hectic, but on occasion when I have a chance to ease into the day I’ll want some reading and light music to accompany my coffee. Not every book or album works at 8 a.m. though, and I’ve made some mistakes on that front. Some novels ask you to wake up all at…
I really wish more people read South African literature. Not in a homework way or a “you should read this because it’s important” way. I mean because these books are alive. They’re sharp, wounded, searching, complicated, and often unforgettable. They deal with history, but they never leave it at the level of abstraction. In South…
Ranking David Bowie albums is ridiculous. It is a bad idea. It is an impossible idea. It is the kind of thing that seems fun until you are suddenly staring at Hunky Dory, “Heroes”, Scary Monsters, Station to Station, Low, and Aladdin Sane like you’ve been asked to choose a favorite nerve ending. And yet…