The Return of Paul Manafort, Thug Whisperer
The return of Paul Manafort, as reported this week by the Washington Post, marks a stunning turnaround for one of the most shamelessly corrupt figures in...
The Soothing Hands of Craftsmen
Welcome back to Culture Club, the weekly feature where Talia and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading, watching or playing....
Notable Sandwiches #89: Hot Dog
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my charming and long-suffering editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the befuddling...
Robert Oppenheimer, Destroyer of Worlds
By David Swanson Welcome back to Culture Club, the weekly feature where Talia and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading,...
Voices at a Revolution
By David Swanson A Village Voice staff meeting in the late seventies "We didn't want to be seen as a left-wing newspaper particularly," said Village Voice...
The Village Voice's Freak Scene
By David Swanson Welcome back to Culture Club, the weekly feature where Talia and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading,...
Notable Sandwiches #88: Hot Brown
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my long-suffering editor David Swanson, wend my way through the ever-shifting document...
The Eternal Return of the Border Wars
“Lady Fortune and her Wheel” by Jean Pichore, c. 1510 Nietzsche had a theory of eternal return—drawn from Indian thought and his own fizzing and eloquent...
How to Live in a Female Body
Welcome back to Culture Club, the weekly feature where David and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading, watching or...
Notable Sandwiches #87: The Horseshoe
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my long-suffering editor David Swanson, wend my way through the ever-shifting document...
Magneto Was Right, Bub
Welcome back to Culture Club, the weekly feature where David and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading, watching or...
Notable Sandwiches #86: Har Cheong Gai Burger
By David Swanson Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where Talia and I trip merrily through the baffling and mercurial document that is...
Turning Away from Disaster
An illustration from Ovid's Metamorphoses, by Virgil Solis, 1569 It started, as great art often does, with a metamorphosis. Or Metamorphoses—specifically,...
A Super Bowl Sunday Syllabus
By David Swanson Welcome back to Culture Club, the recurring feature where David and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading,...
Notable Sandwiches #85: The Handwich
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the baffling and mercurial document that is...
Writing Under Water
"Quatre Arbres" by Egon Schiele, 1917 Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my...
The Truman Show: A Capote Reader
Welcome back to Culture Club, the recurring feature where David and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading, watching or...
Notable Sandwiches #85: Hani
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the baffling and mercurial document that is...
In Soviet Times
Welcome back to Culture Club, the recurring feature where David and I discuss our preoccupations—what we’ve been thinking about, reading, watching or...
Notable Sandwiches #84: Hamdog
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the baffling and mercurial document that is...
The Decline and the Fall
Note to subscribers:Talia has another big book deadline and is also dealing with some creeping burnout, so for the next while the Tuesday columns will be...
A Burns Night Reader
By David Swanson Welcome back to Culture Club, the feature where David and I talk about what we've been reading, watching, playing or thinking about lately....
Notable Sandwiches #83: The Hamburger
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the bizarre and ever-mutating document that...
Abortion, Underground
An abortion rights poster by Andréanne Quesnel Yesterday saw the shambolic and somewhat parodic Iowa caucuses; despite the lavish media attention devoted to...
On the Theory and Practice of Reading
Welcome back to Culture Club, the feature where David and I talk about what we've been reading, watching, playing or thinking about lately, for premium...
Notable Sandwiches #81: Ham Redux
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the bizarre and ever-mutating document that...
"What We Are Up Against"
Dear readers! I am a bit under the weather today with a virus, so we are re-publishingi an older column, from when this was a significantly smaller...
The Oral Histories of TV'S Greatest Shows
By David Swanson Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid...
Notable Sandwiches #80: Five Ways of Looking at a Ham Sandwich
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where we trip merrily through the bizarre and mutable document that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable...
New Year, new platform: Putting your money where our mouth is
setting sail into new waters Hello and happy new year to all our lovely sandwich-eaters & sword-wielders! You might notice that this email isn't coming from...
Shit Sandwich
Readers, sword-wielders, and sandwich-eaters, Today’s post is meant to be about a Dutch sandwich called the hagelslag, which is buttered bread with some...
How to Respond to Critics
“Art Critic” hy Norman Rockwell, 1955 Any writer faces critics, and any life led in public, even to a small public, faces the same. As much of my work has...
Me Me at the Moors
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Notable Sandwiches #78: Gyros
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where we trip merrily through the bizarre and mutable document that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable...
Substackers Against Nazis
Hi readers—Below is a letter to the Substack founders that I helped draft as part of a group of publishers seeking answers to questions about the platforming...
Natural Born Killers
Shelley Shannon, on trial In 2018, a woman walked free after twenty years in prison. In wire photos from her 1993 trial, 46-year-old housewife Rachelle Renee...
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Eight Links for Chanukah
Happy Chanukah! Talia is presently turning in her revised book manuscript and David is otherwise indisposed, so in lieu of a sandwich column we're presenting...
Autocracy Now!
As I write these words, an American election is going on, in the way that American elections go on, and on, and on—years and months of un-fun pageantry as...
Regarding Henry
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Notable Sandwiches #77: Guajolota
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the odd mutable ranks of Wikipedia’s List of...
On the Big Terrible Thing
A week ago, I picked up Matthew Perry’s memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, a book about a life plagued by addiction that came out a year...
Talking Turkey
Howdy all, David and I are taking the week off to rest and recharge (aka: move house, and frantically work on book revisions, respectively), so we’re leaving...
Full Windsor
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Notable Sandwich Notes
It’s been a busy week here at S&S Industries, for a variety of reasons both personal and professional. So when we realized that the regularly scheduled...
Fuck You and Your Word-Stealing Machine
The Luddites: Man vs Machine This week, The New Yorker, an august magazine from which I resigned in national disgrace five years ago, dedicated its entire...
Master of Tasks
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Notable Sandwiches #76: Gua Bao
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where we trip merrily through the bizarre and mutable document that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable...
Israel-Palestine: 100 Years of Coverage
1932 fundraising map for a Jewish State With Talia focused on one last book deadline, I decided to use this opportunity to try to make some kind of sense of...
Ekphrasis
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....