The Tangential

Christmas Audiobook Review: L. Frank Baum’s “Life and Adventures of Santa Claus”

About the book: Talk about a war on Christmas! In this 1902 fantasy, the Wizard of Oz author offers a complete pagan backstory for the man with all the toys. Santa Claus, we learn was a foundling saved in an uncharacteristic burst of empathy by Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World. After a Tarzan-like childhood among…

Christmas Audiobook Review: Barbara Robinson’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”

About the book: Barbara Robinson’s story of a troubled family of kids who unexpectedly join the Christmas pageant at the young narrator’s church was serialized in McCall’s before being published as a book in 1971. It’s since become a standby of seasonal children’s entertainment, both in book form and as a play and a 1983 TV movie…

Christmas Audiobook Review: J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Letters from Father Christmas”

About the book: From 1920 to 1942, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote letters to his kids from Father Christmas. The annual North Pole updates were full of juicy details about the comic exploits of “North Polar Bear,” the logistics of sorting gifts for millions of children around the world (eventually, the bear convinces Father Christmas to institute a…

“Le Corbusier: The Complete Buildings” Shines New Light On 20th Century Classics

A title like Le Corbusier: The Complete Buildings suggests an encyclopedic guide, and the heft of the new book only furthers that impression. Inside, though, Cemal Emden’s photographs constitute a more subjective tour through virtually all of the extant structures designed by the seminal Swiss-French architect. Emden’s relationship with Corbusier’s buildings is like Man Ray’s relationship with…

“The Disaster Artist” Tells the Story of “The Room”

Is it possible to make a good movie about a bad one? How about if you’re James Franco? The answer to both questions, it seems, is yes. With The Disaster Artist, Franco succeeds in telling a consistently entertaining — and, perhaps, illuminating — story about the making of The Room (2003), the best worst movie of the 21st…

Thanksgiving Audiobook Review: Anne Tyler’s “The Accidental Tourist”

About the book: Anne Tyler’s tenth novel, published in 1985, was largely praised, particularly for the characters of Macon Leary and Muriel Pritchett. As the book begins, Leary is left by his longtime wife as the two remain racked with mourning for a recently deceased young son. Leary makes his way with the help of his…

A short history of The Tangential

The Tangential is a pop culture and creative writing blog launched in 2011 by three writers living in Minneapolis: Becky Lang (now Radecki), Jay Gabler, and Katie Sisneros. That was a golden age of irreverent confessional blogging, and over the first couple years we built a national following. Notably, we gained over 120,000 followers on Tumblr, where we were often associated with the provocative, extremely online writers in the movement known as alt lit. We created spinoff blogs including The Sport Hole, The Party Whip, The Tangential Ruins Minneapolis, and Tan Genitals. We hosted Minneapolis events and published three books.

We were having so much fun, in fact, that we never got around to monetizing. Oops! Well, we did have a little income from the books and events, and we became an Amazon affiliate. (This is your official disclosure that we subsidize our hosting costs via revenue from partner links.) Eventually, though, the editors and contributors who fueled the site’s early years largely moved on to other projects.

Today, The Tangential is run by Jay, who continues to publish criticism and other writing as well as to maintain the site’s catalog of posts — if only for, as we’ve always said, “the good of society.”