“It’s as if he’s trying to spread his personal chronic sickness of Anhedonia,” is Mary Rose Somarriba’s judgment of Woody Allen’s latest movies. Writing in The Grim Reaper of Comedy , today’s “On the Square” article, she argues that his movies present a philosophy, and the philosophy kills the comedy.
Updated: I should have mentioned Mary Rose’s earlier analyses of popular culture: Artificially Conceiving a Bad Romantic Comedy , A Girl’s Life in the Cyberbubble , and Middle Men: Not Starring Steve Jobs .
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…