This track-by-track take on Jason Isbell’s newest album Something More Than Free is as comprehensive as it is intelligent. Isbell, who rose to fame as a member of Athens, GA mainstays The Drive By Truckers, has seen most of the press narrative around him focus on his trips to rehab and subsequent recovery–this record, however, aims for something more. Here’s our Torch Ballads & Jukebox Music column to satisfy any lingering musical urges.
If It Takes a Lifetime
Khodorkovsky’s Unscreened Documentary
A German film about imprisoned Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is set for release in Russia next week, but it is unlikely that many in the country will actually have an opportunity to see it.
Shame and Queerness
Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased, writes on shame and queer identity. “Shame would give me the power to submit to almost anything.”
North Woods Winter Watercolor
Recommended Reading: Oliver Bendorf’s poetry comic “Experiment With Color in a North Woods Winter” at Hobart.
History of the Cube Farm
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The Moth Wins MacArthur Award
Among the institutions that have just won MacArthur Awards are The Moth, for promoting the art and craft of storytelling, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, for engaging the public and sparking policy change.
Sullivan on the Animal Mind
John Jeremiah Sullivan has a new essay about animal consciousness – and specifically our understanding thereof – in Lapham’s Quarterly. This effort is more serious and decidedly less terrifying than Sullivan’s last essay about animal agency, “Violence of the Lambs.”
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Perpetua
When, in 1921, a young French writer working as a translator for James Joyce asked the writer to reveal his schema for Ulysses, Joyce balked, saying that “If I gave it all up immediately, I’d lose my immortality.” What he meant, at least in part, is that he wanted his opus to be relevant in perpetuity. At Full-Stop, Dustin Illingworth reads Ulysses on Twitter and asks: can the book survive the transition from the page to social media? Pair with: Josh Cook on The House of Ulysses by Julian Rios.