Blog
The Secret to Writing Well
While people may say, “oh, it’s nothing, anybody could do it,” that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do or understand. Like flying a plane, knowing how to write well takes more than knowing the function of the buttons at your disposal. Yes, it’s helpful and possibly important to know the descriptive elements of visual art or the narrative flow of classical music when it comes to writing, but it is not enough to make one’s writing great.
Credibility and Relatability: Autobiography in the Past and Present
“An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details,” wrote Roald Dahl in Boy: Tales of Childhood, in which he, rather ironically, describes his childhood and the experiences that influenced him into becoming an author. Autobiographies and memoirs have been present in literature for centuries.
Why is Cynicism So Prevalent?
Climate disasters, endless Middle Eastern conflicts, nationalist uprisings, xenophobia, and government surveillance. Most societies today are combatting at least one of these predicaments. The increased speed at which information travels has made people aware of problems that should not be persisting in a progressive social order. Aside from being a unifier of sorts and an aid to the consolidation of voices, mass communication may have contributed to widespread cynicism, making us distrustful of the principles and norms around us.
Age of You: MOCA’s latest is merely a showcase for its curators—and not the artists
Age of You, MOCA’s current exhibit, intends to explore what it means to be an individual in the face of accelerating technology and what it means to exist in a society in which our personal data has become the most important commodity under late capitalism.
Seven Scars
“What are the colours of your body?” She asks me. As if she cannot see for herself what I am.
As if she cannot believe her eyes.
Fascism Can Be as Glittery as the Tyrrhenian Sea
Last summer I visited the Amalfi Coast in Italy, the last leg of my first real vacation to Europe. Time didn’t seem to move in Amalfi. I did nothing but gorge myself on pizza and pasta, and roast in the sun on a different beach each afternoon. I turned five shades darker in the span of five days. I ate pistachio gelato until I was sick.
Literary Value and Zadie Smith’s “Tower of Shame”
An interview with Zadie Smith recently appeared in The Guardian, and, in the title, was a quote from Smith herself: “I’ve never finished Proust or even the Brothers Karamazov.” Only in the subtitle is there any information about Smith’s responses to the multitude of dependent-clause prompts that read a little like a feedback form: The book I’m currently reading. The book I wish I’d written. The last book that made me cry. Despite the format of the interview, it still manages to provide plenty of lovely insight into the interests and reading habits of one of the world’s most famous authors.
To Invade or Not to Invade: The Possibility of U.S. Military Intervention in Venezuela and Its Potential Legal Justifications
Amid one of the worst humanitarian crises today, tensions among the world’s greatest military powers are rising. It has become clear that the current U.S. administration is much more committed to the situation in Venezuela than previous administrations. However, so are Russia’s and China’s.
Quid Pro…So?
It’s all so caricaturable. A big, orange-toned president, acting on the advice of his stumpy, loud New York lawyer, barters over the phone with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, offering military aid in exchange for dirt on his political opponent Joe Biden, whose son sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The move gets figured out and the walls around the president start to close in. President Trump is now facing an impeachment probe for this quid pro quo, and his chances of survival are looking thinner as the process advances.