HARPER’S MAGAZINE, the oldest general interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive our national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, Annotation, and Findings, as well as the iconic Harper’s Index.
Speech Acts In support of his claim that the left is suppressing free speech [“A Climate of Fear,” Revision, March], Russell Jacoby dredges up some old news, including the PEN/Charlie Hebdo controversy in 2015, and quotes out of context a line from an article I wrote at the time, on “gentlemanly Islamophobia.” The protest by some two hundred writers was not about Charlie’s right to publish what it pleases, but rather about the fact that the surviving editors were to be honored at a gala dinner with the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award, normally given to writers suffering persecution or imprisonment by their governments. In my article, I wrote: “The question here is not whether they are victims of free speech—of course they are—but whether…
“Let me persuade you to come to the place where tomorrow meets today,” a voice-over invites near the beginning of Design for Dreaming, a General Motors promotional film from 1956. A masked Lothario whisks a young woman out of her bed to a car show at the Waldorf Astoria. It’s a magical setting, and there are many wonderful automobiles to choose from, but, just as she’s stepping from a Cadillac, an apron appears over her gown. “Better get her into the kitchen quick!” the narrator quips. Sure enough, our heroine finds herself baking a cake, but she’s doing so in the Frigidaire Kitchen of the Future, where “push-button magic” makes light work of any domestic task. A screen displays a lurid confection, complete with a list of ingredients. The woman…
Brian T. Watson is an architect and cultural critic. For twenty-three years, he has been a columnist with the Salem News in Salem, Massachusetts, focused primarily on current affairs and the forces that were and are shaping societies both here and abroad. Independent of the pandemic and war, we are beset by a range of unprecedented developments that together, in this century, threaten the very existence of civilization. The current states of just ten forces — capitalism, technology, the internet, politics, media, education, human nature, the environment, population, and transportation — are driving society in predominantly negative ways. These forces are powerful and interconnected and their combined dynamics will carry us into any number of disasters well before 2100. We have the knowledge and solutions to address our difficulties, but…
[Essay] BOOK OF LIES By Fae Myenne Ng, from Orphan Bachelors, which will be published this month by Grove Press. Our father’s elder sister arrived with her husband in 1921. We called her Big Aunt. Big Uncle was a twin, but I don’t remember another uncle. My mother explained that in their village, the weaker twin was sacrificed at birth to prevent it from stealing the hei, the life force of the stronger twin. Big Uncle was gentle and always deferred to Big Aunt. Surely, his family married him to a strong woman to counteract any imbalance. Big Aunt would buy the paper name needed for my father to enter the country. She found a man with American citizenship selling a slot for a paper son that matched my father’s…
They told me they couldn’t offer me an interview with her at this time. Fine by me—I didn’t want to talk to her anyway. She talks a lot and doesn’t say much. A Financial Times profile published on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday suggested we have her to thank for spirulina, celebrity skin care lines, the good divorce, blended families, sex positivity, and dry skin brushing (just what it sounds like). I’ve also heard she made yoga happen. This is all obviously ridiculous, flatly ahistorical, except maybe the celebrity skin care line thing, but that doesn’t matter—even if someone thinks she’s done more harm than good, and that a lot of it is an upscale scam, they will comment, wearily, pragmatically, just a little bit enviously, that you have…
I have now seen sucrose beaches and I water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 2,100 pounds of hot flesh. I have been addressed as “Mon” in three different nations. I have seen five hundred upscale Americans dance the Electric Slide. I have seen sunsets that looked computer-enhanced. I have (very briefly) joined a conga line. I have seen a lot of really big white ships. I have seen and smelled all 145 cats inside the Ernest Hemingway residence in Key West, Florida. I have heard steel drums and eaten conch fritters and watched a woman in silver lamé projectile-vomit inside a glass elevator. I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat…
