Trotskyist Christmas
Paul calls one snowy evening to extend an invitation to me. I met him a few weeks ago, in front of the NYU library, where he was distributing copies of the newspaper Workers’ Vanguard. Ever since, he and I have… Continue Reading
Pieces by Daniel Howell
Dispatches From Officialdom
In high school, during chemistry class one day, the following staticky announcement came over the intercom: “Attention teachers, the book salesman is in the building. I repeat, the book salesman is in the building. Please lock your doors and do… Continue Reading
Snippets
Let’s Abolish Tenure
The American university is facing a dual crisis. First, students can’t pay off the debts they’re running up from their tuition. Second, they’re being taught by an underclass of radically over-educated adjuncts who are subsisting, with PhDs in hand, at… Continue Reading
Nonfiction Takes
For Mother’s Day
1 /// Mom’s rock collection My mother used to spark out back, cancer patient headscarf round her brow and little black John Lennon glasses so people don’t ask a lot of questions. Come the ritual of the rocks, she’d dig… Continue Reading
Issue 3 Poetry
Response to “Welfare Fraud Lady is Insane”
At first, I wanted to write a response that would be a pastiche of Mariev Finnegan, but I simply haven’t smoked enough “saliva.” One suspects that her fictional world is a little too complete (right down to the consistent linguistic… Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Response to “Well-Wrought”
A poem doesn’t exist solely on the page. It projects from the paper onto the world. Think of it as a recipe. If it is poorly done, you start off wanting to make eggplant parmesan and wind up with pizza… Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Response to “Revival Bin Blues”
Leigh’s essay on the nostalgia industry can’t help but take us on some nostalgia trips of our own. The grammar of the piece subordinates “nostalgia” (for Leigh, the cynical effort to turn childhood icons into formulae for commercial success) to… Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Martha Ruth Marcy May Bekorah Marlene
When I visited my parents for Thanksgiving, we went to our favorite movie theater. It plays art house movies, features an organ player before the show, and is decorated with very whimsical stars and angel statues on the ceiling. It… Continue Reading
Essays Issue 2 Nonfiction
Response to “Avenida Paulista”
The archive is a ziggurat, always growing upwards, always closer to heaven. On top will sit the glassy-eyed medium through which the totality speaks, liberated from personality. It is erected everywhere, and every place becomes no place beneath its shadow…. Continue Reading
Responses Takes
Degree of Life: Movie Dates and Number Crunching
The first time I ever heard of Terrence Malick was in a recorded lecture I downloaded off the Internet from the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. It was 2007, but I guess the lecture was from a few years prior, right after