Santiago Ramos

The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays by James Wood Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 339 pages, $27 In a recent interview promoting his latest essay collection, The Fun Stuff, critic James Wood sighed: “It’s tiresome after a while just to hand down judgments all day, all night.” English-born and . . . . Continue Reading »

Emily Witt’s report on her experience of the San Francisco BDSM scene in the latest issue of n+1 provokes not only for its graphic descriptions, but also for the questions it raises about life’s meaning. The piece contrasts that radical environment with Witt’s more conventional desires … Continue Reading »

A review of The Map and the . . . . Continue Reading »

Now that the New York Philharmonic has accepted the North Korean government’s invitation to perform in Pyongyang , the question most worth asking is: Can music stop a man from killing people? The German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has said that writing his much-acclaimed film The . . . . Continue Reading »

Although it has become a somewhat sappy and romanticized notion, the individual artist really does pose a threat to all totalitarian regimes. The romance should not take away from the reality of the artist’s power. Yosif Feyginberg’s 2002 documentary Glenn Gould: The Russian Journey . . . . Continue Reading »