If you went to a liberal arts college in the United States, it’s very likely that you turned twenty-one in a foreign (to you) city, trying to find yourself and meanwhile getting lost in a new language. I turned twenty-one in Nairobi, Kenya – and not the one we think of today, packed with coffee [...]
At the annual MLA convention in Seattle last week, humanities professors and university presidents gathered to discuss something they know all too well: dissertations. It’s safe to say that everyone there had written one, holed up for years in the process of jumping through that final, enormous hoop towards the ultimate prize: a PhD. But [...]
This news is sort of last-week, but it’s been on my mind. Charlie Trotter, the famed Chicago restaurateur who helped ween that city off its diet of hot dogs and milkshakes, introducing farm-fresh vegetables and elegant presentations at his posh restaurant on West Armitage Street, has decided to shut it down this August. His reason, [...]
Like many other readers, during 2010 I was drawn into the hype surrounding the publication of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 by University of California Press. As the story goes, Twain decreed that his autobiography not be published until 100 years after his death, primarily to allow those individuals that he excoriated or [...]
While the rest of the nation is focused on the Republican presidential primary, here in Wisconsin, we are thinking about another looming election: the recall election of Governor Scott Walker. You probably remember Governor Walker from early 2011, when he pushed through legislation stripping public employees of their union rights, causing several Democrat state senators [...]
Last winter, when the founding editor of Contrary magazine, Jeff McMahon, asked me to anchor the site’s blog, I was flattered, of course, but also a bit intimidated. The magazine had already established itself as a literary gem in a field that can seem either overcrowded or woefully empty depending on how you look at [...]
You can call it narcissistic, but sometimes I Google myself. Who doesn’t? If you’ve done anything in the public eye — writing, especially — you’re bound to show up in unexpected places on the Web. When I Google my own name, it’s simply to find those places. And each time I do this, I find [...]
Hanging out with William Wegman and his dogs in NYC. I am there to interview him for my forthcoming Working Artist video. Up until a few years ago, I worked in the art business and Wegman w as one of my artists. In my office I had the last photograph he ever took of his first [...]
I had no idea what to expect. A holiday party for ghostwriters sounds like scene in a Woody Allen movie from the late 80s. A bunch of disgruntled, hyper-cerebral guys in well-worn corduroy jackets sipping G&Ts and swapping stories about dropping acid with Cary Grant or Henry Kissinger’ s bathroom habit s. So as I [...]
Rafael Torch’s work in Contrary: Ebb and Flow: Part Two. The End. No More. Finis. by RAFAEL TORCH on JULY 13, 2011 I sit on my hotel bed and say some kind of prayer, an eight word utterance I’ve imagined seemingly out of nowhere in the last few days in order to keep at bay the worst I [...]
She was ensnared in a draconian justice system for more than four years. She endured a humiliating trial and conviction for murder, and was then locked in an Italian prison while legal experts, journalists, and countless others rallied either to defend or condemn her. When Amanda Knox was finally exonerated for the murder of her [...]
Let me state right up front that I don’ t like musicals. I don’t even like much theater, for that matter. But I have a unique distaste for musicals, which typically lack the compositional sophistication of opera and by definition are not carried by the stuff of a traditional play: namely, acting and dialog. To [...]
I brought no Italian with me to Rome. At the Brazilian Embassy, I tell the guard that I am to there to see visiting artist Vik Muniz. He speaks no English. My best mime only warrants a raised eyebrow. In desperation, I plead, “Parlez francais?” though I do not. A call is placed and I [...]
The Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, in New York is not known for a lot of things: reliability, friendly service, cleanliness, reasonable pricing… It’s a sprawling, filthy system that’s made many a New Yorker scream in disbelief every time the fares go up. How dare they cut service, close stations, and charge more to ride [...]