“One Cannot Redeem the Past”
An Interview with C. Derick Varn
Frances Madeson asks C. Derick Varn about poetry, path dependence, and how to unfuck the world.
All Back Pages
Permanent Handstamp
Life at the center of the edge of 90s music
Memories from the life of a music journalist in the era of grunge, riot grrls, and the end of history.
The Importance of Being Hermes
The occult spiritual practice of Oscar Wilde
Surely we all know Oscar Wilde. Aesthete, dilettante, artist, flaneur...and occult practitioner? The untold, esoteric story.
Genesis
A short story
“But you’re still alive ain’t ya?” A story of North Carolina.
Steamroomography
An annotated guide to gay cruising in New York City steam rooms
Men have had sex with each other in public spaces since time immemorial. This sensual essay explores how they've done so in New York, from personal experience.
Can Fascism Think?
The deafening silence around Heidegger’s fascism has been broken – what does this mean for philosophy and politics?
In his new book Heidegger in Ruins, Richard Wolin examines the depth to which Nazism penetrates the influential German existentialist's entire philosophy.
From Issue 3
A Specter Hangs Over the Hamptons Couch
Inside the Outsider Art fair
On perusing the obscene spectacle of the Outsider Art Fair, a communist declares: abolish the art market!
In the Domain of the Unknown
From death mask to CPR manikin, L'Inconnue de la Seine is a mythic symbol of our attempts to grapple with death - or reverse it.
A drowned Victorian teen, her medical manikin doppelganger, and their enduring entanglement with the question: “Can death be undone?”
Great minds are not like ordinary people; theydo not wash socks or remember birthdays.They see clear through one aspect of the world, socks and all. The aspect furls and stretches like a catbaked in sunlight. Or molten glasspulled like hot caramel in cool stone hands. I have known three Great...
