Style
There Is More to French Opera Than “Carmen” and “Faust”
Virginia Woolf, in her essay “The Lives of the Obscure,” savors the potential fascination of reading authors whom posterity has cast aside: “One likes romantically to feel oneself a...
The Iranian Revolution Almost Didn’t Happen
Strange to think, but there was a time when the United States’ most steadfast ally in the Middle East was Iran. In 1953, the C.I.A. had backed a coup...
Three Plays on the Pancake
Pancake Soufflé at Pitt’sIt’s arguable that this dish, the flagship dessert at chef Jeremy Salamon’s proudly kitschy Red Hook restaurant, isn’t actually a pancake: no pan, no cake. But...
Watching the “King of the Hill” Revival from Texas
I came to “King of the Hill” late, during the COVID pandemic. The animated hit co-created by Mike Judge ran for thirteen seasons starting in the late nineties. I’d...
Sterling K. Brown’s Upstanding Archetype
There’s a certain face that only Sterling K. Brown can make. It is yoked to no particular emotional state, and emerges just as often when the actor is conveying...
The Banal Provocation of Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans
Two American blondes have recently hawked denim. Beyoncé, an ambassador for Levi’s, dressed in outlaw drag, arrives at a semi-deserted laundromat. She slinks out of her 501s, revealing her...
At the Edge of Life and Death in Ukraine
In June, 2023, a Russian Iskander ballistic missile blew apart Ria Lounge, a popular pizza restaurant (and one of the few that remained open) in Kramatorsk, a city in...
The Musician Bringing the Bagpipes Into the Avant-Garde
One night this past spring, the audience members at a bagpipe concert in Red Hook, Brooklyn, could be organized into two neat categories: people who knew little to nothing...
The Ambitious Film Deconstructions of Stan Douglas
The enterprising Tiler Peck has been a leading dancer at New York City Ballet for more than fifteen years, played a neurotic ballerina on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s “Étoile,” and created...
