Somewhere along the way, frontman Win Butler and the rest of Arcade Fire must have read Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I read the novel in my tenth-grade English class—it’s a grim, wryly comedic cultural critique that centers on a small-town Hitler studies professor and his family. Everyone struggles to cope with the specter of his … Read more
I remember first hearing “Wake Up” sometime in the middle of my freshman year of high school. Those forceful opening chords and near-euphoric shouts forming a soundtrack to a confusing mess of a year: wandering between classes and buildings, slipping through crowded hallways, dodging the unzipped mouths of backpacks spilling class handouts into the walkway. … Read more
I am immediately uneasy when “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” starts. It’s not simply the aimless lyrics, nor the drastic change in tone from “Une Année Sans Lumière”, but the frantic desperate energy of the song that impresses upon me the depth of the collapse that has occurred. Not knowing what has actually happened only exacerbates … Read more
I continue to return to “Neighborhood #2 (Laika)” not because of the brilliant technical complexity, but due to the transformative power of the accordion. In step with the marching beat and swelling strings, the optimistic bellows give the song a country-folk flavor. Listening to that whimsical accordion chord progression transports me to a small, European … Read more
For an album inspired by death, Funeral seems surprisingly, almost uncomfortably full. Where conventional wisdom would suggest stripped-down spare melodies and muted vocals, to represent loss, Arcade Fire opts for lush orchestras and swelling choruses. In the band’s alternative vision, the spirits of the dead—by turns protective and threatening— never truly pass on. Instead, they … Read more
In the age of online dating and Tinder, modern affection has become increasingly rationalized. No longer constrained by the numbers in our phonebook, we have access to more possible dates in a day than preceding generations could have in a lifetime. The idea that you could meet anyone, anywhere, is an invitation for the rationalist … Read more
Boston and the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution Barbara F. Berenson 192 pp. The History Press. Paperback $12.04 Barbara Berenson’s Boston and the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution retells the antebellum and Civil War periods with particular emphasis on the roles played by Bostonians. A far-reaching treatise on the considerable contributions … Read more
Even sporadic readers have read works in translation. Stieg Larsson, author of the top-selling crime trilogy that began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, wrote in Swedish. Japanese author Haruki Murakami is flying off shelves. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables was long ago taken to Broadway. But as accustomed as we are to our world’s … Read more
After the recent outbreak of conflict in Ukraine, it has once again become fashionable for Western critics to cast suspicion upon the ideal of world peace. In a spate of responses to the growing crisis, writers argued that Vladimir Putin’s Machiavellian maneuvers made it clear that world peace is just an unattainable fantasy, and that … Read more
Lost among sweaty pictures of the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square, a Beijing of a past era still exists somewhere on my computer’s hard disk. At the naïve age of 12 years, my visit to China was about documenting what I saw rather than understanding it, taking photographs of people rather than connecting with them. … Read more