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“Annihilation” Tastes a Rainbow of Gruesome Death
Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation is, as the New Yorker describes, a paradigm of “weird fiction.” The first volume of his Southern Reach trilogy, all published in 2014, the book doesn’t develop along the lines you’d expect, and its surrealistic imagery develops into an elaborate, unresolved meta-allegorical conceit. That doesn’t sound like the stuff of a page-turner,…
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Here’s the “Black Panther” Rave Review You Don’t Need
Critics were asked to avoid spoilers when reviewing Black Panther and so I will, but really, nothing I could write could in any meaningful way “spoil” the experience of this movie. It’s a historic film, an unprecedented convergence of black talent led by an African-American creative team with a result that splashes across the screen with the…
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We Need Another Winter Olympics ‘Miracle,’ and We Don’t Need to Score a Single Goal to Do It
The U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame sits high on a ridge off a highway in Eveleth, Minnesota. In front of the boxy building stands a sculpture of a raised hockey glove holding a stick that isn’t quite proportionate in size. When I walked past the glove and signed the visitors’ log one afternoon last fall,…
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Facebook, Harvard, and the (Supposedly) New Social Hierarchy
This post was originally published in 2010, in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. I knew when I was at Harvard that I was surrounded by people who, unassuming though they might have been when puking in the bushes (or, per the neighbors’ written complaint to the dean, urinating in “expensive shrubbery”), would one day be…
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Audiobook Review: Holly Black’s “The Cruel Prince” Is Torture Porn for Teen Fantasy Fans
Say this for Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince: the title is an undersell. I counted at least four cruel princes, with cruelty levels ranging from occasional and playful to routine and deliberate. If you queue this book up hoping for some rotten royals, boy oh boy, will you ever get your wish. Among Goodreads users, The Cruel…
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“The Phantom Thread” is “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Except Literally
Daniel Day-Lewis attended this year’s Golden Globes with a shaved head, looking uncannily like Matt Lauer. Every time the camera cut to him, he’d be smiling gently and for a moment, before the correct solution clicked into place, your brain would have to reconcile the idea that a notorious abuser was sitting placidly in a…