Deep dives into literature and film by @wesalwan and @erinowhat.
Cambridge, MA
Joined June 2020
- Tweets196
- Following5
- Followers379
- Likes98
In Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose," a man on the bus reassures everyone the animal is "perfectly harmless." We are not sure we believe him — and neither, we think, was Bishop.
(sub)Text · A Map-Like Imagination in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop (“The Moose,” Part 2)
New episode — Civilizational Discontents in “Planet of the Apes” (1968)
Wes: "Are you siding with the damn dirty apes?" Erin: "Of course I am." New (sub)Text on Planet of the Apes (1968).
Two men wait all day for Godot and eat a raw carrot. Wes Alwan on what expectancy does to a life — and why the richness always gets postponed to a future that doesn't arrive. Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
(sub)Text · Existence and Expectancy in “Waiting for Godot” (Part 2)
Dostoevsky's Underground Man wants freedom from prosperity, peace — and freedom itself. Which, as it turns out, is also a genre of music.
(sub)Text · “Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: An Anatomy of Human Self-Destructiveness (Part 1)
Why does King Lear make his daughters compete to praise him for land they were going to inherit anyway? Erin: he's crashing his own funeral — spying on his eulogies while he's still in the room, so nobody can be honest.
(sub)Text · Filial Ingratitude in in Shakespeare’s “King…
In 1972 you could still be morally outraged in the New York Times. Their reviewer's complaint about The Godfather — 'the growing pornography of violence' — read aloud in full.
(sub)Text · Business Gets Personal in “The Godfather” (1972)
Cary Grant crashes a recital, wrecks the furniture, and ends up holding a drawer. Irene Dunne, mid-aria, turns a trill into a laugh she can't suppress — the finest thirty seconds in screwball comedy, explained.
(sub)Text · Mutual Amusement in “The Awful Truth” (1937)
Odysseus gets home to Ithaca and then... waits. Disguises, tests, more disguises. Erin and Wes on what your therapist would actually advise the hero of the Odyssey to do.
(sub)Text · Terminal Wooings in “The Odyssey” (Part 3 of 3)
"So f*** the fascists, let's get rid of the fascists" — Wes on why Auden's "September 1, 1939" refuses that move, and what happens to people who can only ever judge the other side.
(sub)Text · Clever Hopes in W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939”
Erin isn't sure Elf can carry half an hour. Wes did the reading anyway. It went about as well as you'd expect.
(sub)Text · The Meaning of Christmas Spirit in “Elf” (2003)
Wes has been calling it a one-year vacation. Erin points out that the play is fairly clear the man has tuberculosis. His diagnosis of himself is quicker than his diagnosis of Torvald.
(sub)Text · The Door Slam Heard ‘Round the World: Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”
Tiresias tells Oedipus he will end up in "a grim equality between you and your children." Wes on why, in Sophocles, thinking your way out of your fate is already a kind of incest — the self-made man as a man who has generated himself.
(sub)Text · Autonomy and Incest in…
A 12th-century wife tells her husband she stays up all night at the window to hear the nightingale sing. He believes her. Then he sets traps in every tree. Marie de France's 'Laustic', in sixty seconds.
(sub)Text · Courtly Reciprocity in “Laustic” and “Guigemar” by Marie de…
The first thing Martha does in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is quiz her husband on a movie title — and she doesn't know the answer either. Erin on why that's the whole marriage in thirty seconds.
(sub)Text · Better and Bested in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Did you believe in Santa? Wes never did, and he has questions. Erin thinks that explains a lot. Our two-part close-reading of Elf begins.
(sub)Text · The Meaning of Christmas Spirit in “Elf” (2003)
Animals run for their lives and then nap under a tree. We can't. Wes on why art should feel like rest, and why it so rarely does. The Jerboa, part two.
(sub)Text · Aesthetic Humility in Marianne Moore’s “The Jerboa” (Part 2)
What counts as a Christmas movie? Erin has two rules, and under them Fellowship of the Ring qualifies. Part two of our close-reading of Elf.
(sub)Text · The Meaning of Christmas Spirit in “Elf” (2003) – Part 2
A grown man tries to explain what reading Shakespeare does to him and lands on a comparison he immediately has to insist he means seriously.
(sub)Text · Love and Wit in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”
What do you call a government ruled by a stage magician? Oz is full of real magic — witches, talking trees, apples that throw themselves at you — and the man in charge is the only one with no powers at all.
(sub)Text · Prestidigitocracy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)