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ne day I discovered that my uncle also had a library. Or at least there was a room called ‘the library’, which contained a wall of books, and a long table and several chairs. The room was musty but clean. No one ever used it, like front parlours in the suburbs.

I took in the books, which were ha…

I cite this as evidence of the longevity of my connection with the magazine, but in fact the link goes back even further, pre-dating the acquisition of the missing Granta 1. In 1979 I was living in Oxford trying to finish a doctoral thesis and teaching in various Oxford colleges as a jobbing lectur…

I knew about the union effort before I started (ten of my MFA classmates also worked as Brendas), and although I had no organizing experience, I started attending union Zoom meetings in my first month. My coworkers pushed me to think about the job beyond collecting party anecdotes (my favorite was …

I was surprised that “Why Is Everything So Ugly?” didn’t actually argue or demonstrate how the visual culture of New York City is symbiotic with “neoliberalism.” The only contention was that the apparent popularity of five-over-one mixed-use apartments coincides with a period of low interest rates …

Ganz’s explanation for “Why Culture Sucks” (as the post is titled) draws on Arendt and the destabilizing, ephemeralizing character of the internet. I think he’s more or less right, but his explanation is incomplete. Our broken phenomenology is inextricably bound up with the broken material basis fo…