Word: essays
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Thirty years ago, in an essay titled "Homage to Duke Ellington on His Birthday," novelist Ralph Ellison posed these questions: "How many generations of Americans, white and black, wooed their wives and had the ceremonial moments of their high school and college days memorialized by Ellington's tunes? And to how many thousands has he defined what it should mean to be young and alive and American?" Today, at a time when neo-swing and the Big Band sound have become trendy, even bursting forth from commercials for the Gap and Burger King, it's worth pondering how much...
Richard Dawkins is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His latest book is Unweaving the Rainbow (Houghton Mifflin). This essay was adapted from his introduction to Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine (Oxford University Press...
...that species. But as a model of anything important? Thanks, I'll take Katha Pollitt. Sure, Matt Damon is cute, like the way your fourth grade class gerbil was cute, even after it ate pencil shavings and died. You proclaim Vincent Gallo "the most brilliant man ever." His photo-essay reads, and I quote, "And my friend Val Kilmer was dating Cher. Then Cher was my friend, too. I was friends with Cher. I was friends with Val and Cher." Nuanced! Jade Jagger is described as "talented and beautiful and successful." Mightn't it be more worthwhile to feature someone...
...ideological clarion call to future college students like you who would go on to demand the displacement of an ossified Western canon with more relevant investigations of low culture. Several years ago a student who will remain nameless--her name was Jen--handed in a pictoral interpretation of the essay question in place of a ten-page paper. I instantly knew that she had gleaned her air of entitlement and complete disrespect for all forms of academic propriety from being a nightly fan of "You Can't Do That On Television." Although I failed her, it was the proudest moment...
...Anne Rapp script dawdles through predictable Southern Gothic plot twists that a real writer like Beth Henley would use to showcase memorably bent characters. Rapp's idea of character comedy is to have the movie's villain literally caught with her hand in the cookie jar. This little essay on greed and blurred bloodlines is another footnote to an Altman career that is fast becoming all footnotes...