July was the 20th anniversary of The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells. Listening to the album brought back memories of seeing Jack White in Montreal and the crowd going crazy over ‘Seven Nation Army,’ the song whose riff gets sung out in unison for no reason during hockey games. It also brought back memories of […]
A Russian Opus, A Granta Best Young American Novelist, and The Future of Music
Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Big Green Tent (trans. from Russian by Polly Gannon) In the world of books, we reserve the word ‘opus’ for works that are generally long. Hefty hardbacks that weigh heavier than bricks, things that make you go ‘ooph’ when you pick them off the bookshelves or get them in the post, daunting in the […]
Reading With Company
There’s an invisible man in my room watching me. I assume he’s leaning against the wall in the corner, next to the unplugged dehumidifier. Of course, he could be standing right over me, his breath infinitesimally dampening the pages of my library book, The Visible Man. Speaking of which, the invisible man, according to the […]
On Seeing Paul Simon Live
First, let’s get this out of the way: as we all know, Rufus Wainwright, here tonight playing opener, deserves his own huge set, which he very well has had given that he toured Australia no more than a year ago. That he’s even here at all again to accompany Paul Simon speaks volumes about […]
Joel Mak 