Nathan Rabin: Why Gen X Is Super Media-Literate
The Joy of Trash author talks about how D.A.R.E., bad TV, Weird Al Yankovic, and 9/11 created a generation of ironic idealists.
The Joy of Trash author talks about how D.A.R.E., bad TV, Weird Al Yankovic, and 9/11 created a generation of ironic idealists.
Nathan Rabin celebrates The Joy of Trash—and Gen X irony and cynicism—one terrible movie, book, and TV show at a time.
"I am a queer woman, and I was silenced most of my life," writes Lauren Hough, author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing.
The novelist and essayist attacked CNN's handling of Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan—and promptly drew the ugly ire of the podcaster's admirers!
One of Richard Wright's best books went unpublished in his lifetime, due to "unbearable" scenes of police brutality. Now at last it is in print.
"There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed / Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red) / And all the day long he'd a wonderful view / Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue)...."
"(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; / only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) / nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands"
"Вновь Исакий в облаченье / Из литого серебра. / Стынет в грозном нетерпенье / Конь Великого Петра...."
"I'll tell thee everything I can; / There's little to relate, / I saw an aged, aged man, / A-sitting on a gate...."
Why postwar culture from Jack Kerouac to Andy Warhol to James Baldwin to Susan Sontag to Yoko Ono battled boundaries hemming them in.
"When we two parted / In silence and tears, / Half broken-hearted / To sever for years, / Pale grew thy cheek and cold, / Colder thy kiss; / Truly that hour foretold / Sorrow to this...."
"Ô mon beau chat frileux, quand l'automne morose / Faisait glapir plus fort les mômes dans les cours, / Combien passâmes-nous de ces spleeniques jours / À rêver face à face en ma chambre bien close...."
"There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around / That the colt from Old Regret had got away, / And had joined the wild bush horses — he was worth a thousand pound, / So all the cracks had gathered to the fray...."
"From childhood’s hour I have not been / As others were — I have not seen / As others saw — I could not bring / My passions from a common spring — ..."
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union: "Ах, что-то мне не верится, что я, брат, воевал. А может, это школьник меня нарисовал..."
"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now / Is hung with bloom along the bough, / And stands about the woodland ride / Wearing white for Eastertide...."
"When have I last looked on / The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies / Of the dark leopards of the moon?"
"Frères ! de ces deux voix étranges, inouïes, / Sans cesse renaissant, sans cesse évanouies, / Qu’écoute l’éternel durant l’éternité, / L’une disait : nature ! et l’autre : humanité !..."
"Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon / The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon...."
"The Pobble who has no toes / Had once as many as we; / When they said 'Some day you may lose them all;' / He replied 'Fish, fiddle-de-dee!'..."
Too Close and The Underground Railroad provide wildly different experiences.
"О буйные ветры, / Скорее, скорей! / Скорей нас сорвите / С докучных ветвей! / Сорвите, умчите, / Мы ждать не хотим, / Летите, летите! / Мы с вами летим!.."
only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down...
"Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow, / Leonard was a lion with a six-foot tail, / George was a goat, and his beard was yellow, / And James was a very small snail...."
"La luna vino a la fragua / con su polisón de nardos. / El niño la mira, mira. / El niño la está mirando...."
Wir alle fallen. Diese Hand da fällt. Und sieh dir andre an: es ist in allen.
Cartoonist Peter Bagge looks at Henry David Thoreau's life at Walden and beyond
"From here, we'll show the Swede our saber; / We'll build a city on the sea, / To better spite our haughty neighbor. / Our destiny is manifest -- / To cut a window to the West..."
« Et hue donc ! bourrique ! Sue donc, esclave ! Vis donc, damné ! »
In honor of my 100 YouTube subscribers, a special reading of a lovely Arthurian poem.
"When I consider men of golden talents, / I'm delighted, in my introverted way, / To discover, as I'm drawing up the balance, / How much we have in common, I and they...."
"Homme, libre penseur ! te crois-tu seul pensant / Dans ce monde où la vie éclate en toute chose ? / Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose, / Mais de tous tes conseils l'univers est absent...."
Where does this variation on Mithridatism come from?
Written at age 13 for his younger brother and sister: "A short direction / To avoid dejection, / By variations / In occupations, / And prolongation / Of relaxation, / And combinations / Of recreations..."
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, / No matter how trifling the cost; / For the end of that game is oppression and shame, / And the nation that pays it is lost!"
"Я мечтою ловил уходящие тени, / Уходящие тени погасавшего дня..."
"I knew not which to make my pet, — my pipe, cigar, or cigarette..."
"love is more thicker than forget / more thinner than recall / more seldom than a wave is wet / more frequent than to fail..."
"Écoutez la voix du vent dans la nuit..."
"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish in the Paleozoic time..."
A second member of the small genre of poems pretending to be by the French poet François Villon.
In this age of Internet and social media, Emily Dickinson tells us to be as quiet as a volcano.