The story of Willie Bosket, now serving a life sentence, due only to be released from solitary confinement in 2062, and once described as New York state’s most dangerous prison inmate, is the kind of tale all too easily described as an American tragedy. Fox Butterfield‘s All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition ofContinue reading “The American Tragedy of Willie Bosket”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
Dexter, Psychopaths, and Vigilante Justice
Dexter provoked a great deal of commentary–as any long-running television serial on a killer-killing serial killer would (and should.) Now that I’ve finished the show–all eight seasons of it, after feeling several times during the sixth season that I would never make it to the end–I’ll throw in my tuppence. Dexter‘s central conceit–the killings mentionedContinue reading “Dexter, Psychopaths, and Vigilante Justice”
The Smells of the Homeless: Unpleasant Reminders of Our Good Fortune
I receive, on a daily basis, many reminders of my singular good fortune, of my having scored big in life’s sweepstakes: I have a good job–one that gives me a sabbatical every seven years, a lovely family, and good health. (Despite a sore shoulder thanks to a persistent case of supraspinatus tendinopathy, two busted discsContinue reading “The Smells of the Homeless: Unpleasant Reminders of Our Good Fortune”
Ogling the Antics of the Rich and the Stockholm Syndrome
The New York Times’ Room For Debate features the following question today: Several Academy Award contenders like “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “American Hustle” glorify white-collar criminals and scammers, and many reality TV shows embrace the wealthy, too. A new series, “#RichKids of Beverly Hills,” is the latest example of our enthusiasm for “oglingContinue reading “Ogling the Antics of the Rich and the Stockholm Syndrome”
The Author’s Offspring, the Finished Deal
A few days ago, I received my author copies of my latest book. Five paperbacks, neatly bundled up in a cardboard parcel bearing an impressive array of stamps and customs bills. I tore open the cardboard (with my bare hands, no less!) Inside, they were wrapped up in clear plastic, neatly and tightly stacked onContinue reading “The Author’s Offspring, the Finished Deal”
The Cade Rebellion and the Republican Party
Jack Cade, the leader of the Cade Rebellion, is an entertaining Shakespearean character (Henry VI, Part 2), well equipped by the Bard with many memorable lines. So are his followers, one of whom utters the oft-quoted, ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ As Stephen Greenblatt noted in Will in the World: How ShakespeareContinue reading “The Cade Rebellion and the Republican Party”
The Never-To-Be-Returned-To Perennial Draft
My email client shows eighty-two drafts resident in its capacious folders; my WordPress dashboard shows thirty-seven; and a quick search through various document folders on my desktop machine shows several dozen others. They are monuments and gravestones and white flags of surrender; they are signposts of intention, evidence of procrastination run amok; they are bitterContinue reading “The Never-To-Be-Returned-To Perennial Draft”
Ta-Nehisi Coates Attacks One Privilege, Defends Another
Last week, Ta-Nehisi Coates rightly took Dylan Byers to task after the latter’s snarky response to Coates’ anointment of Melissa Harris-Perry as ‘America’s foremost public intellectual’: What sets Byers apart is the idea that considering Harris-Perry an intellectual is somehow evidence of inferior thinking. I came up in a time when white intellectuals were forever makingContinue reading “Ta-Nehisi Coates Attacks One Privilege, Defends Another”
Parents and Children: Perfect Strangers
A couple of days ago, I received news that a gentleman who had known my father during their years of service in the air force had passed away. A dozen or so years ago, we had established a brief correspondence by email; in his messages, he had briefly detailed the extent of his contact withContinue reading “Parents and Children: Perfect Strangers”
The Conformist Non-Conformist
In yesterday’s post I had quoted W. H. Auden‘s review of David Luke‘s translation of Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger and Other Stories in responding to his acid assessment of a reductionist impulse in art criticism. Today, I quote him again, on a topic that is of similarly perennial interest, the problem of conformism as a hallmark of non-conformity:Continue reading “The Conformist Non-Conformist”
Samir Chopra 