By: Matthew Battles

THE LIBRARY IS collapsing on itself, trying to digest itself. Renovation has turned the whole place into a vast construction site, where tradesmen build temporary walls surrounding temporary walls surrounding temporary walls, ad-hoc postindustrial labyrinths […]

By: Lucy Sante

The first time I met Jean-Michel Basquiat was in November or December 1978, at the Mudd Club. His hair was dyed orange and cut very short with a v-shaped widow’s peak in the front. He […]

By: Franklin Bruno

He began his critical career as a Welsh signalman’s son drawn to English literary tradition, and ended it as a Cambridge don extolling the vitality of rural and working-class life. In between, RAYMOND WILLIAMS (1921-88) […]

By: Katie Hennessey

Though often cast as a lovable father in middlebrow comedies like The Shaggy Dog and the long-running TV show My Three Sons, FRED MACMURRAY (1908-91) was more convincing in noir films. In Double Indemnity (1944), […]

By: Matthew Battles

James D. Griffioen is a Detroit photographer, blogger, and father whose work chronicles the strangely ruinous renaissance taking place in his city. I first hit upon his work thanks to Twitter, where friends pointed me […]

By: Joshua Glenn

I’ve been watching a lot of movies on my desktop, lately, via Netflix: Watch Instantly. Works great. The only problem is, the selection is quite limited, so I end up watching movies I’ve never heard […]

By: Mimi Lipson

Filmmaker PRESTON STURGES (1898-1959) made a joyful mockery of the Hays Code with his improbably wholesome card sharks, unwed mothers, imposters and flimflammers, his ballot box stuffers, shoplifters, party girls and bigamists. “I can’t keep […]

By: Joshua Glenn

The era of guilt- and con­sequence-free sex ended in 1982.

By: David Smay

Insanely prolific, unbelievably vital, formally inventive.

By: Greg Rowland

All hail the Mighty Fin! For was it not JIMMY FINLAYSON (1887-1953), third banana in 33 Laurel and Hardy films, who offered us emancipation through his unique enactment of The Double Take & Fade Away? […]

By: Joshua Glenn

The 1884-93 cohort sought to make it new, to begin again.

By: Lynn Peril

She had oodles of cash, acres of style, and eventually her very own 18th-century palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal, where she slept in a sterling silver bed designed by Alexander Calder. There was heartache — […]

By: Lucy Sante

What caused me to pick this item out of the trash heap was not its title — there are better editions of DeQuincey’s book out there (if none so pocket-sized) — but its publisher. Appeal […]

By: Annie Nocenti

“My nose is blown, doc,” mopes a bandaged bloodhound cop as he sags against a panel border. In “No Nose is Good Nose,” Dr. Howland Owl laughs at the patient, violating his “hippocritical oaf.” Set […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Another postscript to Matthew Battles’ meditation on doodling. I originally wrote this item for Laylah Ali: 5 Responses to 5 Paintings, an exhibition brochure published by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2002. *** Late […]