Category Archives: Nonfiction

Letters to Jackie Kennedy

More than a million people wrote letters to Jackie Kennedy after her husband’s assassination. Some were famous, like Langston Hughes, but most were just normal people, sending their condolences and expressing their sadness and bewilderment. In her new book, “Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation,” released by HarperCollins, Ellen Fitzpatrick went through these [...]

Sam Shepard’s “Day Out of Days”

Photo by Brigitte Lacombe
Surely it would be blasphemy to suggest that the strongest suit in Sam Shepard’s fecund, polymath deck is his prose.  His plays have won him the Pulitzer (“Buried Child”).  His acting has garnered an Oscar nomination (The Right Stuff).  His direction on stage and screen is highly respected, or better.  But it [...]

Review: Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman

One of the most interesting demi-myths of contemporary politics concerns neoconservatism as an intellectual movement and its rumoured leftist heritage. Oft commented upon, the Trotskyist origins of some of its early thinkers (Irving Kristol, James Burnham), and an apparent debt displayed in its evangelical policies of aggressively exported global ideological revolution, meant that for disillusioned [...]

Fear of Music: Is Experimental Music an Institution, or Institutionalizable?

Although it never quite fully answers its foundational question, Fear of Music does provide the necessary background for interested readers to formulate their own answers while at the same time raising interesting questions about the relationship of the arts across disciplines.

The Praying Mantis

After reading an interesting essay last year about the Praying Mantis by the surrealist writer Roger Caillois, I decided to keep a couple of these insects as pets. The mantis, which can grow as big as six inches and mostly lives in warmer climates, adapts easily to a domestic environment and is often incorrectly confused [...]

As It Was: Non-Fiction by Anna Joujan

It was the first time I have seen my mother dance. She clung tightly to my stepfather, her tear-stained face resting on his shoulder. Next to me, my brother wept at the sight, covering his face with his hands. I hesitantly rested my hand on his hunched shoulder, longing to reach out in a big [...]