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No Shell, Just a Ghost
by David Givens
Tracing a path of memory and experience through childhood, cinema, Kate Beckinsale, and snow.

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’Till the Day That I Drop
by Dan Kois
Dan Kois goes to bat for the late Robert Altman’s much-maligned Popeye film.

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The Last Antiwar Poem
by Rolf Potts
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Wichita Vortex Sutra” seems doomed to be eternally overshadowed by the poet’s celebrated “Howl”. Rolf Potts explains why this lesser-known work — which he calls an elegy for the power of language in an age of competing information — has never been more relevant.

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Dogsbody Does Dublin
by Jim Ruland
On the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Dogsbody leader and casual Joycean Jim Ruland is at the nineteenth International James Joyce Symposium in Dublin. Mental inebriation and drunken, tweedy weavings abound in the hallowed university halls and the less-than-hallowed pubs.

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SXSW OnDemand
by Matthew Derby
Matthew Derby endeavors to create, attend, and enjoy his own personal customized five-day South by Southwest music conference (no matter many blank stares and skeptical retorts he has to endure while explaining it to associates and loved ones).

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Not Enough Protection from the Song
by Matthew Derby
It cannot have escaped your notice that something about the Arcade Fire has ignited, exploded, and cauterized the minds and souls of indie music listeners during the past year. Matthew Derby attends two of the bands’ shows and returns with reflections on what exactly this group of startled young North American citizens is doing to everyone.

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The Passion of the Morrissey
by Chloe Veltman
During his tenure as frontman for the Smiths, this gladioli-strewing, hearing-aid-wearing waiflet of a man inspired fan devotion worthy of a deity. Why, then, wonders Chloe Veltman, might he take his own advice to a “silly old man” in “misguided trousers” (aka Mick Jagger) and “get off the stage”?

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Where Are The Real Niebuhrians?
by Alan Koenig
Reinhold Neibuhr saw the real problem with American intervention, writes Alan Koenig. The neoconservatives aren’t listening.

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Melissa Holbrook Pierson
interviewed by Alan G. Brake
On the downside of urban renewal and the upside of nostalgia with the author of The Place You Love Is Gone.

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Sandy Reynolds-Wasco
interviewed by Shana Nys Dambrot
Quentin Tarantino’s Jack Rabbit Slim’s, Wes Anderson’s Tenenbaum brownstone, Michael Mann’s taxi cab. Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, the set decorator behind these and many more, talks about the relationship between set and story, the art of film decorating both real and abstract, and the cinematic magic of interesting architecture.

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Ted Leo
in conversation with Tom Scharpling
“The spirit of that conversation is something that from pretty early on has surrounded every aspect of what we’ve done, whether that’s playing live or even down to how wordy a lot of our songs are.”

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Dana Spiotta
interviewed by Liza Johnson
The National Book Award finalist discusses the imaginative, revelatory, and immersive powers of research.

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Jamie Lidell
interviewed by Baron Von Luxxury
Warp Records’s pasty-white-iest pioneer of future-retro R&B talks about his music, his live performances, and why Brian Eno never burns out.

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T Cooper
in conversation with Sigrid Nunez
A glass of cool, clear water? Or sentences on the forearm? Sigrid Nunez and T Cooper hash out their experiences as authors, readers, reviewees, and animal observers.

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Miranda July
interviewed by Eli Horowitz
Eli Horowitz talks with Miranda July — the mind behind the acclaimed film Me And You And Everyone We Know — about filmmaking, performance art, mundane longing, and a short taxonomy of interview questions.

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George Lakoff
interviewed by James Verini
The man who would teach the Left to stop speaking the language of the Right tells James Verini a thing or two about “framing”.

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Steve & Mark O’Donnell
interviewed by each other
Accomplished showbiz writers Steve O’Donnell and Mark O’Donnell talk with each other about comedy-writing, novel-writing, and the “freak-show angle” regarding their being twin brothers.

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Luc Sante
interviewed by Stephen Johnson
Stephen Johnson talks to Luc Sante about low-lifes, writing, and the “founding myths” of our country—though there may not be much difference between the three.

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Dan Chaon
interviewed by Tom Barbash
Tom Barbash talks with Dan Chaon about his books Fitting Ends and Among the Missing.

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Jack Black
interviewed by Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler interviews Jack Black about weddings, shortly after the release of School of Rock.