More than a century ago, Thorstein Veblen—American economist, sociologist and social critic—warned that the United States had developed a bizarre and debilitating network of social habits and economic institutions. Ascendant financial practices benefited a limited group at the expense of the greater society; yet paradoxically Americans deemed these practices necessary [...]

Michel Houellebecq has published four novels, all of them bitter and miserable. Their pessimism isn’t the only thing to them, or necessarily the most important thing, but it is probably the first that you’ll notice. Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994), Les Particules élémentaires (1998), Plateforme (2001) and La Possibilité d’une île (2005)—published [...]

Last spring the Art Institute of Chicago unveiled its most significant acquisition to date. It was neither a painting nor a sculpture, but Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing. The 264,000 square foot addition was quickly hailed as a museum masterpiece, though in terms best fit for a cathedral—the New York Times’ Nicolai Ouroussoff called it a [...]

Popular science is part of popular culture: our shelves teem with tomes that flatter and patronize us in equal measure, and every fallen senator is the victim of his genes. But what about popular philosophy? Is there a philosophical version of Steven Pinker? Various names spring to mind—Simon Blackburn, A.C. Grayling and Alain de Botton [...]

The best word I’ve come across to describe David Cronenberg’s filmmaking style is “disembodied.” It was voiced as a criticism, but I think he’d own up to it. Whatever squelchy or peculiar or downright disgusting thing is going on in his pictures, the camera tends to exhibit an almost serene, floating detachment, like a severed [...]

I have what I have always held to be a mildly discreditable day job, that of teaching philosophy at a university. I take it to be discreditable because about 85 percent of my time and energy is devoted to training aspiring young members of the commercial, administrative or governmental elite in the glib manipulation of [...]

The London-based Granta “magazine of new writing” has devoted its 108th issue to the city of Chicago. The special issue, whose release was celebrated with a week of local events in September, promises a tour of Chicago during its “cultural moment,” in the words of its editor, John Freeman. Freeman has claimed the issue will [...]

The fall of 2009 saw something of an apotheosis for Chicago theater. Following in the wake of Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer-winning August: Osage County—an epic family drama in the grand American tradition of O’Neill, Miller and Williams—a pair of plays set in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood opened in Times Square. Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain, a generic [...]

Elevator Repair Service’s success depends upon its ability to present Fitzgerald’s novel straight and in quotation marks at the same time. It is a seemingly impossible tightrope act of the type described by those existentialists who defined authenticity as combining a full engagement with one’s life with awareness of its character as a performance: the thematic resonances with Gatsby itself, however vertiginous, are certainly no accident. [...]

There’s hardly a decent, hard-working person among the pilgrims of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, but the Wife of Bath may be the female slacker’s oldest English ancestor. She connives her way from one husband to another, collecting property and wealth along the way without ever having to work a job. Chaucer uses the same raunchy sense of humor for the Wife of Bath as he does for all of his characters. And her whole Prologue consists of a defense against the judgment she anticipates from her fellow pilgrims. Lack of acceptance from society is a critical problem that female slackers still face today. [...]