Essay · Music & Culture The Sound He Built and the Silence It Left Phil Spector invented one of the most ravishing sonic experiences in the history of recorded music and then, across the following decades, dismantled every reason to enjoy it cleanly. The Wall of Sound remains. So does everything else. By Bergotte · LosContinue reading “Phil Spector”
Category Archives: Aesthetics
Chapter 32: Autumn Leaves
At Bryn Mawr, I take a seminar on women’s causes, descended from the work of Katharine Hepburn’s mother, a suffragist and alumna who fought for women’s rights at the turn of the century. In one class, our professor says something that stops me in my tracks: “Feminism without racial justice is white women demanding equalityContinue reading “Chapter 32: Autumn Leaves “
Chapter 31: Moonglow
“When do you have to be back at college?” he asks as I pick him up from Palm Springs Municipal Airport. “Last week of September.” “What about Topper? Where is he?” “He’s back at Harvard.” I reply. I change to other topics before the boy can ask more questions. We pull into the drive ofContinue reading “Chapter 31: Moonglow”
Roger Hargreaves’ The Mr. Men
Essay · Literature & Ideas Little Books, Absolute Selves Roger Hargreaves set out in 1971 to answer his son’s question about what a tickle looks like, and in doing so produced one of the stranger philosophical projects of the twentieth century: a universe populated entirely by beings who are identical to their own single quality,Continue reading “Roger Hargreaves’ The Mr. Men”
Chapter 30: The Memphis Flash
I find myself at the Louisiana Hayride in the days after my birthday, seated in the audience beside his little girlfriend, whom, for some reason, I’ve been appointed to chaperone. Oddly, I don’t mind. I look out for her: buying sodas, finding our seats. She feels so young to me, untested, unarmoured, especially beside theContinue reading “Chapter 30: The Memphis Flash “
Diana Vreeland
Essay · Fashion & Culture The Empress of the Imaginary Diana Vreeland did not edit magazines. She edited reality — selecting from the available world only those elements that met her standard of vividness, discarding the rest without apology, and presenting the result with a conviction so absolute that generations of readers, photographers, and designersContinue reading “Diana Vreeland”
Chapter 29: Young at Heart
I’m nearly halfway through college, and the final term before the summer holiday in 1955 has been something of a whirlwind.I go to Palm Springs with Topper over spring break.We look at houses out West because Grandpa George has told me I should diversify my investment portfolio, and that real estate is always a solidContinue reading “Chapter 29: Young at Heart “
Luigi Moretti
Essay · Architecture & History The Architect Who Could Not Be Placed Luigi Moretti was a Fascist, a theorist, a sensualist, a fraudster, and one of the most formally inventive architects of the twentieth century. That these facts belong to the same man, the same career, the same restless and finally tragic intelligence, is theContinue reading “Luigi Moretti”
Chapter 28: Only The Strong Survive
I don’t know quite how it’s happened, but I’m falling in love with Topper. He’s so different from the boy, steady where the boy is volatile, conscious where the boy is instinctive. Topper is deep, calm seas; the boy is like a bottle rocket. With my parents gone, the boy still childlike like me, andContinue reading “Chapter 28: Only The Strong Survive”
Filth Is My Politics: John Waters, Divine, and the Cinema of Glorious Bad Taste
For six decades, the Pope of Trash has been making films that Baltimore’s respectable classes would prefer not to exist. In doing so, he and his muse created something that outlasted respectability entirely — a body of work that is simultaneously the most offensive and the most loving in American cinema. By Bergotte There isContinue reading “Filth Is My Politics: John Waters, Divine, and the Cinema of Glorious Bad Taste”
My World of Interiors 