Why is a word used to describe a literary technique also the word used to describe the buffoonery, the cruelty and carelessness, of contemporary political and economic life? What is in a word as minor as “gimmick”?
For Sianne Ngai, a professor of English at the University of Chicago and the author of “Theory of the Gimmick” (Harvard), the answer is: everything, or at least everything to do with the art consumed and produced under capitalism.
You’ve probably already heard a description of the formation of black holes that goes something like this: crush matter down to tremendous densities and you’ll make a black hole. This is true. Compressed matter is one avenue to the creation of black holes. Heavy stars collapse under their own weight at the end of their life cycle and the material of the star crushes to catastrophic densities until a black hole forms. Still, stellar collapse is not the only imaginable mechanism for their formation. The dense quash of matter is often mistakenly taken as synonymous with the black hole. But that’s not the essence of the black hole. Black holes are not stuff.
It felt good to move my body. And accomplishing something gave me a jolt of mood-lifting dopamine. In the middle of an achingly difficult year, here was a simple task I could complete – something good for me.
You’re so curious about what the next episode will bring that even if you’ve stepped away from the book for a meal or a good night’s sleep, you feel like one of those 19th-century readers who stormed the New York Harbor, awaiting the arrival of a new installment of a Dickens novel.
What happens when you live in a world where what you can do is all that matters and you don’t really know how to do anything? In The Arrest, Lethem writes about a world that’s ready to move on from humanity’s bullshit toward something healthier and self-sustaining. The questions he poses to his characters is whether or not they’re ready to move forward with the times, or if they’d rather spend their remaining days on Earth dreaming about sushi.
Written with humor and honesty, Lehrer takes us through necessary, cosmetic, and life-altering surgeries, as she tackles her sexual identity, friendships, family ties, and her art career. The girl on the operating table is transformed into the skin she lives in—"a queer crippled Jew with peculiar shoes, a dreadful, grievous monster." Readers see Lehrer grow—from page to page—into a radically visible advocate, teacher, curator, and human-being.
Particulate Matter is a moving example of how to write about climate change, not didactically, but with the deep impact of both personal loss and literary elegance.