Author: Matthew Westphal

“Out of My Mouth Comes Unimpeachable Manly Truth”: Gary Shteyngart Watches Seven Days Of Russian TV

“Here is the question I’m trying to answer: What will happen to me – an Americanized Russian-speaking novelist who emigrated from the Soviet Union as a child – if I let myself float into the television-filtered head space of my former countrymen? Will I learn to love Putin as 85 percent of Russians profess to do? Will I dash to the Russian consulate on East 91st Street and ask for my citizenship back? … Or will I simply go insane?”

This Greek Artist Is Hacking The Euro

“A handful of euro notes have circulated depicting ominous events like people fleeing buildings, hanging themselves, and writing bloody-looking graffiti that reads, ‘THE END IS NIGH.’ Playing off the typical euro note’s blandly interesting and politically approved historical architecture, this altered money strikes right to the heart of the crisis.”

“Not Indifference But Detachment” – Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer

“I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at NewsHour every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming. … I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future.”

“Unscrambling An Egg” – Can A Dance Work Be Edited?

Judith Mackrell: “A couple of months ago I asked whether choreographers need editors and whether dance, like literature, might benefit from having some kind of inbuilt system of feedback, comment and control. It became clear that this was a question that others were asking. And a few weeks later, it was taken up by Rambert in their offer of a public debate.”

Why Zadie Smith Will Not Keep A Diary Ever

“I realize I don’t want any record of my days. I have the kind of brain that erases everything that passes, almost immediately, like that dustpan-and-brush dog in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland sweeping up the path as he progresses along it. I never know what I was doing on what date, or how old I was when this or that happened – and I like it that way.”