Los Angeles Review Of Books – Winter 2024-2025
Category Archives: Arts & Literature
Preview: Philosophy Now Magazine January 2025
Return to God?
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: December 2024 / January 2025
Lost Hegel lecture notes now being digitized • Professor Ted Honderich dead at 91 — News reports by Anja Steinbauer
SOCIAL MEDIA
Plato’s Cave & Social Media
Seán Radcliffe asks, has Plato’s Allegory of the Cave been warning us of social media for 2,400 years?
Trolls, Skeptics & Philosophers
Rosemary Twomey questions our online epistemology.
THE RETURN OF GOD?
Exploring Atheism
Amrit Pathak gives us a run-down of the foundations of modern atheism.
A Critique of Pure Atheism
Andrew Likoudis questions the basis of some popular atheist arguments.
Evil & An Omnipotent, Benevolent God
Zdeněk Petráček looks at the biggest problem facing monotheism.
A God of Limited Power
Philip Goff grasps hold of the problem of evil and comes up with a novel solution.
The Best Possible World, But Not For Us
Mohsen Moghri gives a Godless but principled response to the problem of evil.
Medieval Islam & the Nature of God
Musa Mumtaz meditates on two maverick medieval Muslim metaphysicians.
ARTICLES
Metaphors & Creativity
Ignacio Gonzalez-Martinez has a flash of inspiration about the role metaphors play in creative thought.
Seeing & Knowing
Shashwat Mishra explores the limits of perception via the Molyneux problem.
Perpetuating the Santa Deception
Jimmy Alfonso Licon wonders whether pretending there’s a Santa is naughty or nice.
Volney (1757-1820)
John P. Irish travels the path of a revolutionary mind.
How Can We Make A Computer Conscious?
Each answer below receives a random book. Apologies to the entrants not included.
INTERVIEWS
Robert Stern
Robert Stern talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.
LETTERS
Letters
Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts • Get Smarter • Decoding A Decoding • A Swift Rebuttal • Basic Arithmetic • A Message on Meaning
COLUMNS
Xenophanes (c.570-c.478 BCE)
by Terence Green
Philosophers on Dance
by Matt Qvortrup
“I refute it thus”
Raymond Tallis kicks immaterialism into touch.
Seneca On Anger
Massimo Pigliucci tells us how to avoid becoming irate.
REVIEWS
Too Late To Awaken by Slavoj Žižek
T.W.J Moxham reads Slavoj Žižek’s little book of Hegelian horrors.
Barriers to Entailment by Gillian Russell
Christopher John Searle recommends a study of which moves are allowed in logical arguments.
It’s A Wonderful Life
Becky Lee Meadows considers questions of guilt, innocence, and despair in this classic Christmas movie.
Country Life Magazine – December 18, 2024 Preview
Country Life Magazine (December 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Christmas Double Issue’…
A story of homeliness
The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy considers the Christmas story told in familiar rituals
Earth stood hard as iron
Frost casts a garden’s structure into sharp relief. Tiffany Daneff enters a sparkling world
The Very Revd Jo Kelly-Moore’s favourite painting
The Dean of St Albans chooses a canvas full of uplifting light for dark times
The legacy
Kate Green pays tribute to Dame Ninette de Valois, the ‘godmother of ballet’
Where Britain’s first saint lies
In the first of two articles, John Goodall traces the saintly history of the ancient abbey church of St Albans, Hertfordshire
Love to hear the robin go tweet, tweet, tweet
The feisty robin is the undisputed avian king of Christmas. Mark Cocker wonders why
It’s a most wonderful time of the year
From weaving wreaths to corralling choristers, the work is ramping up for country people, who talk to Kate Green and Paula Lester
Baby, it’s gold outside
Catriona Gray meets the artists capturing Nature’s beauty in gold
Silence is golden
Stop and listen to Nature’s voice, urges John Lewis-Stempel
Each year you bring to us delight
Hanging treasured decorations is all part of the magic. Matthew Dennison opens the bauble box
Look out! Look out! Jack Frost is about
Deborah Nicholls-Lee dares to unveil the mysterious figure
The Editor’s Christmas quiz
Take on our quizmaster — and, more importantly, your family and friends
Anyone for indoor cricket?
Melanie Cable-Alexander buckles up for riotous country-house-corridor games
No Risk, no reward
Harry Pearson takes over the world with the classic board game
Make ’em laugh
Jonathan Self chortles at British comedy
The Christmas Story: ‘Bring me flesh and bring me wine’
The spirit of Christmas works its magic on a curmudgeonly baronet in Kate Green’s tale
Interiors
Natural scents win for Arabella Youens
While shepherds watched their flocks
The sheep and its patient guardians have long delighted artists, finds Michael Prodger
Luxury
Knitting, diamonds and Giles Coren’s treats
It takes a village
Is the perfect rural habitation real, wonders John Lewis-Stempel
Don’t mince your words
Modern mince pies are but pale shadows of the past, believes Neil Buttery
You’re one hot roast potato
Who can resist a roastie? Not Emma Hughes, nor anyone else in their right mind
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson builds a gingerbread house
That’ll do, pig
Glazed and succulent, the Christmas ham is the king of the feast for Tom Parker Bowles
Lay, lady, lay
Give wine time to age, urges Harry Eyres
Crown Him with many crowns
John Lewis-Stempel gathers in the holly, once divine diadem, now a cow’s Christmas feast
The straw that broke the camel’s back
Labour’s family-farm tax will mean ruin for a beleaguered sector, says Minette Batters
‘Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional’
Sam Leith opens the well-worn covers of the childhood books we will always cherish
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
From frogs to rat armies, the natural world has inspired countless ballets. Laura Parker straps on her pointe shoes for the bunny hop
Highlights, delights and lowlights
Michael Billington awards his accolades to the stars — and the scourges — of the stage
Spectres of the feast
Operas with food and wine may be rousing, but there are perils, warns Henrietta Bredin
Unputdownable: the page turners of 2024
Country Life reviewers select their top books
Literarature: The Paris Review – Winter 2024-2025
Fredric Jameson on the Art of Criticism: “Ideological critique has to end up being a critique of the self. You can’t recognize an ideology unless, in some sense, you see it in yourself.”
Hanif Kureishi on the Art of Fiction: “When I was in hospital in Rome, having the experience of being a paralyzed man nearly dead, my only excitement was in the thought that I could write some of this shit down.”
Gerald Murnane on the Art of Fiction: “A fatal question—what are people reading these days? Never mind what people are reading these days. What should I be writing about is the fundamental question.”
Prose by Dan Bevacqua, Caoilinn Hughes, Silas Jones, Alec Niedenthal, Adania Shibli, and Abdulah Sidran.
Poetry by Sargon Boulus, Egill Skallagrímsson, Rachel Mannheimer, Simone White, and Hua Xi.
Art by Ann Craven, Ala Ebtekar, and Josh Smith; cover by Seth Becker.
Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec. 16, 2024
President Emmanuel Macron Has Plunged France into Chaos
Lawmakers have toppled the government for the first time since 1962. How did we get here? By Lauren Collins
What Will Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Accomplish with Doge?
Two political newcomers have arrived to slash big government, but so far the project seems less revolutionary than advertised.
Arts & Literature Preview: Kenyon Review – Fall 2024
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
The Week In Art Podcast (December 6, 2024): The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Florida and report on the sales and the mood on the first VIP day at Art Basel Miami Beach.
On 8 December, the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris will reopen, more than five years after the fire that partly destroyed it. Ben Luke talks to one of the architects responsible for its rise from the ashes, Pascal Prunet. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-27) by Parmigianino, better known as The Vision of Saint Jerome.
The painting this week returned to public display for the first time in 10 years, in a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, following conservation, and we talk to Maria Alambritis, the show’s co-curator.
Art Basel Miami Beach, until Sunday, 8 December.
Notre-Dame reopens on Sunday, 8 December.
Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery, London, until 9 March 2025
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Dec. 6, 2024
Times Literary Supplement (December 4, 2024): The latest issue features ‘HIs Other Country’ – The James Baldwin revival continues in the 100th anniversary year of his birth. A trickle of biographies has become a flood, and the causes for which he stood, racial equality and gay rights, speak to the times.
Knowing his name – Celebrating the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth
Bring back the big fish
Record-label scouts chase ‘strange compositions’
No sacred cows
A video game challenges the history of Argentina
By Mia Levitin
Literary Arts Preview: n+1 Magazine – Winter 2025
@nplusonemag (December 4, 2024): The Winter 2025 issue of n+1, RERUN features:
Hannah Zeavin on psychoanalysis’s Palestine exception
Will Tavlin on Netflix’s assault on cinema
Mina Tavakoli attends a ventriloquism convention
Nicholas Dames reads books about parents reading books
Dawn Lundy Martin on falling in and out of love with the university
New fiction by Rachel Khong, Jill Crawford, and Claire Baglin
Bassem Saad on the afterlives of Mahdi Amel
Alan Dean on Radu Jude, Romania’s Godard
Mark Krotov on the return of Trump
Plus the intellectual situation: the editors on Fredric Jameson
Country Life Magazine – December 4, 2024 Preview
Country Life Magazine (December 3, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Full English’ – Why our homegrown style is back….
London Life
- Richard MacKichan finds Sir Paul Smith rockin’ around Claridge’s Christmas tree
- Catriona Gray meets the movers and shakers of the capital’s art world
- All you need to know this month in the capital
Caroline Moorehead’s favourite painting
The author selects a portrait that shows the ‘very essence of what it was to be Sicilian’
The world turned upside down
Carla Carlisle—wife of a farmer and a diversifier extraordinaire— offers an insider’s view on the Government’s ‘Great Betrayal’
What to look for in winter
Now is not the time to hibernate, suggests John Wright, as he encourages us to appreciate the countryside’s stark, intricate beauty in these colder months
Putting in a Good Word
Lucy Denton delves into the remarkable history of Stationers’ Hall, the central London home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers for the past 400 years
The legacy
Amie Elizabeth White hails Henry Cole, inventor of Christmas cards
The rocky-pool horror show
John Lewis-Stempel loves to be beside the seaside as he examines the enduring appeal of England’s glorious coastline
Bowler me over
Matthew Dennison tips his hat to the rural origins of the bowler as he celebrates its 175th birthday
A touch of frost
Beware an ill wind blowing us into 2025, warns Lia Leendertz
Piste de résistance
Joseph Phelan finds a business on an upslope when he visits the last ski-maker in Scotland
Eyes wide shut
Sleep in art is often drunken, deadly or the stuff of nightmares, but rarely is it peaceful, as Claudia Pritchard discovers
Size matters
Charles Quest-Ritson cranes his neck to take in the sheer scale of the specimens at West Sussex’s Architectural Plants
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson on sprouts
Travel
- Life in Grenada quickly grows on Rosie Paterson
- Catamarans and cabanas
- Jamaica’s Blue Mountains are heaven for Steven King
- Fine dining is the holy grail for Pamela Goodman
Boomers Daily 