Jason's Picks

Social Democrat and historian Tony Judt offers a concise discussion of the failures (and successes) of the Left in the 20thC, the current dangers of a backlash from the right and the hole in social services that only the State can fill--both because these services will never be profit generators and because of Our (the State's) moral obligation to one another...We know inequality has been rising since the late 70's. How much are we willing to stand?

I can't stand Ron Carlson. The Wind River Range in Wyo Wyoming is a terrible place. My favorite place. Like the vast whole of the disappearing, ranchless, heartless and undiscovered West.

Terrible angels these children. Setting out to destroy paradise to remake it. Old themes and idealism but well said and quite real--like full weight of the French government real. This Semiotext(e) intervention series is just wonderful. The books are gorgeous and smart. I'll let you know about #2: The Violence of Financial Capitalism by Marazzi.

Feathers, fur, barbed wire, leaves & nerves (roots)"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save." Foer picks up where Pollan leaves off with the ethic of ahisma and Our Unique Responsibilities to the other animals of the Earth (and the Earth)...recall the psychopath's murder weapon in McCarthy's No Country for Old Men...welcome to the factory

With her charming circular logic and attitude of a satisfied mat on the doorstep of this world, Ruefle fulfills the poet's charge.

Healthy, lit crit from one who is, above all, a professional reader and lover of books. Truly. A judicious piece that says much for "the benefit of the doubt" owed a writer. The folks at the NYT Book Review would do well to read this.

Short & gorgeous. As if Jean Genet were locked inside the mind of a child raised in a universe made by Hesse.

Ferris' debut is a cynical look into the American workplace (office or otherwise) set near Chicago around 2000-2001 that is funny, sapient, and ultimately SWEET. See also: The Office, Don Delillo's Americana, Adbusters.

The novel that Nick Hornby says has "Tony Blair...extremely vexed." Our endearing narrator gives a glimpse into the publishing industry and the insular lives of politicians while vaguely masking Harris' very real anger at Tony Blair and his kowtowing to W.

"Why do we human beings typically experience awe...when we try to comprehend, grasp, certain things, such as the origin of space and time, the being of nothingness, the nature of understanding itself? I cannot see what evolutionary advantage this combination gives us--the combination of insufficiency of intellectual grasp together with consciousness that the grasp is insufficient." Page 85

"I do not entirely understand what 'sprituality' is, I said... But as for the creator of this world...his name is Grigory Kotovsky and he lives in Paris, and judging from everything that we can see through the windows of your remarkable automobile, he is still using cocaine." Page 327

"it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled...he will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life...not see him struggling in follies of his own devising. No. The world which he inherits bears him false witness. He is broken before a frozen god and he will never find his way." --The Judge Page 145

Essays on multiculturalism in - No. Essays on one's place in an increasingly plural, multi-"cultural" world dominated by (American) mass consumerism. Read the last paragraph of p. 208 or of 173... She really is a strangely rational, compassionate and fresh voice.

Dismal. Hilarious. Prescient. How little has changed! How much--in journalism. Wonderful descriptions of Daly's slaughterhouse Chicago/Nixon in swampland Miami Beach. Lo! Some honestly biased (somewhat bigoted) and lyrical reportage with a plain sense of humor about the author, minus deprication. Not to mention those conventions.