Archive for the ‘Capitalism’ Category
Thank you so very much for your keen insight and generosity, your willingness to come all the way up here to protect us! Your words have been so reassuring; we feel so much better knowing that you will do everything in your power — including next week’s important meeting with the mayor — to prevent […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Drivel, Gentrification, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gentrification, New York City, Washington Heights
We were recently informed via e-mail of the fait accompli retirement of Glitza Gardenia, a woman who had labored in the administrative trenches of our organization for over three decades. Despite efforts of her manager — the author of the e-mail in question — to honor these years of unflinching service, Glitza refused to consider […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drag Queens, Pleasure, Resignation, The Autumn Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: Commuter, Gardenia, Glitza, Midtown, New York City, Retirement, Work
Today we read about Exit Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Philip Roth’s new book in which his alter ego Zuckerman is said to be (ahem) a recluse, which led us to think he might at least be on familiar terms with the sublime metaphorical/metaphysical qualities so critical to the reclusive state. We wondered if it were […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drivel, Pessimism, Resignation, Writers-American, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: 9/11, Fiction, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Philip Roth, Technology
Thank you, New York Times, thank you! In your recently published article, “Despite Denials, Gays Insist They Exist, if Quietly, in Iran,” you have finally proved just how wrong President Ahmadinejad was when he claimed that his country contained not even a single gay recluse! Before we read this brilliant piece of investigative journalism, we […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drivel, Pleasure, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Iran, Larry Craig, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The New York Times
On the Rape of Pittsburgh
In today’s Times, we read an opinion piece — “Where Everybody Knows Your Team” — by an author who grew up in Pittsburgh and — having now returned — wants us to know how watching the Steelers has long been an important thread of her life. “As any native can tell you,” she declares, “we […]
Filed under: Addiction, Capitalism, Drivel, Infrastructure, Sickness, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Chuck Noll, Dwight White, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, NFL, Pittsburgh, Terry Bradshaw, The New York Times, The Steelers
The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and politicians? Not even footnotes in this story, which is about the aggregation of capital and the relentless rise of the metropolis.
Filed under: Capitalism, Politicians, Sickness, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Betsy Gotbaum, Charles B. Rangel, Charles Schumer, Eric T. Schneiderman, George W. Bush, Harlem, Herman “Denny” Farrell, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Miguel Martinez, Robert Jackson, Scott Stringer, Washington Heights
In the elevator today, we were asked by an acquaintance what book we were reading, and in response displayed Emile Zola’s Nana. Noting his blank expression, we elaborated: “It’s an old French novel.” “Is it good?” Not wanting to digress into our true reasons for reading the book — namely, to better understand the context […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Resignation, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alfred Dreyfus, Emile Zola, Halo 3, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marcel Proust, Microsoft, Nana, The New York Times
On Twilight of the Idols
Did you not see it? Did you not experience the thrill of David Schwimmer emerging from a limousine to shine his brilliant aura across the travertine plaza to the vaunted Roman arches of the Metropolitan Opera? (How many times have we been enraptured by his finely nuanced work and thought, “If only we could see […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Opera, Pessimism, Philosophers | Leave a Comment
Tags: Abu Ghraib, Dame Joan, Donizetti, My Bloody Valentine, The Metropolitan Opera, The New York Times
The Gay Recluse 