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In this edition of Liberties ...
In this edition of Liberties ...
In this edition of Liberties ...
October 2024
One of the strangest things about modern American reality — marked as it is by a multitude of threatening cataclysms (environmental, nuclear, fascist) that seem to loom closer all the time — is that it is funny. Who can deny that the geriatric TV showman, who looks like a cartoon character, pumping his fists and...
Read MoreSeptember 2024
Child refugees and the children of refugees experience a unique longing for a place they never knew. But they also long for a place that does not exist. Our parents in exile create an elaborate fantasy of what their homeland could have been and make it real with the strength of their desires. Because when...
Read MoreSeptember 2024
David Foster Wallace said that life as a famous writer is comparable to working as a TV weatherman in a mid-sized city. You’re only recognized when you are “in the right place at the right time.” Despite the relative obscurity of even successful writers, especially those most regarded for literary fiction, Wallace continues to generate...
Read MoreSeptember 2024
Michel Chaouli’s recent book “Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins” opens with a scenario familiar to anyone who has taught literature: he stands before a roomful of students, holding a book in hand (Kafka’s The Trial) and finds himself at a loss for words. The problem, it becomes clear, has nothing to do with...
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“[T]he ‘kids’, as the phrase goes, ‘got to me.'” Thus concluded Irving Howe’s memoir A Margin of Hope. The book, which appeared in 1982, includes reflections on his conflicts with the New Left during the 60s. All through that decade Howe upheld the banner of democratic socialism, a socialism deeply informed by liberal values, against...
Read MoreSeptember 2024
Print the legend On July 18, 1953, a painfully shy recent high school graduate walked into the Memphis Recording Service, a storefront studio perched at 706 Union Ave in Memphis. The outer office contained a desk, a filing cabinet, and 36-year-old Marion Keisker, who, among her many other duties, screened hopeful musicians who came through...
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The presidential election of 2024 is in fact the unfolding of the rolling coup d’état that began in earnest four years ago. To imagine otherwise is to normalize what is patently abnormal and thus to falsify the crisis. It is to comprehend our politics as much of the political media does, clinging to shattered institutional...
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In the late 1670s and early 1680s, when John Locke first put pen to paper to work on The Two Treatises of Government, he was grappling with a question unnervingly familiar to contemporary Americans. The king, Charles II, had made clear through his policies and actions that he sought to centralize control by establishing an...
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The first time the drone strikes intensified it was just after Thanksgiving, and I was already a bit depressed to have celebrated with Crimean Tatar food rather than turkey and cranberry sauce. That Friday night, like the one before, air alerts were on for hours. This time felt different. My roommate slept in the hallway...
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