Articles from February 2010



Reality Hunger: A Manifesto: hip-hop

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Genius borrows nobly.
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Good poets borrow; great poets steal.
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Art is theft.
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Why is hip-hop stagnant right now, why is rock dead, why is the conventional novel moribund? Because they’re ignoring the culture around them, where new, more exciting forms of narration and presentation and representation are being found (or rediscovered).
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American R & B was enormously popular in [...]

Gilgamesh: The Videogame Review

[Warning: May Contain Spoilers]

About midway through Gilgamesh: Ishtar’s Scorn™ — newly released for PC, Playstation® 3, and X-Box® 360 — Gilgamesh falls asleep and wakes to his sidekick, Enkidu, sprinkling a “magic circle of flour” around him.
“What the f*** is a magic circle of flour?” you ask.
It’s a good question.  No one knows.
But [...]

On The Vanguard

All fiction was about the same thing to Frank Wilder: the crime of his never having been published. Once a reader advanced beyond the great divide of 1945 to enter the furious stew of the modern moment, any novel, Frank felt, was fair game to be scorned. He thought often on the direction of American [...]

The Shiksa

I’m in love with a shiksa—she’s right over there against the subway doors reading The Book Review—and there’s something between us. And I mean that in the worst way possible. You see I am in love with a shiksa who keeps getting farther and farther away from me. And it’s killing me! I mean it; [...]

Tim Barrus: I Hear Voices

His real name was Serge.
He used the name Francois when he was doing sex work. He was all over the Internet.
He was pretty but he wasn’t that good a fuck. Junkies never are. They want to get high. Not have sex. Sex is what Serge did for money.
He wanted into Cinematheque. He was a talented [...]