Ryan J. Meehan
Latest Articles
Wallace’s Unfinished Novel Assesses Metaphysical Accounts
Damage is the natural condition of American culture and society in the fiction of David Foster Wallace. This damage takes ...
Complacence Hampers 'King of Limbs'
Amidst forward motion so thorough, Radiohead has mistaken leanness for fitness. Beyond mere thematic vestiges, “The King of Limbs” sheds something more local and altogether more crucial to Radiohead’s generation-spanning success as a premiere creative force in mainstream music: pop sensibility.
Ambitious 'Empire' Falters
Ultimately, the moments where “Inland Empire” crystallizes are too few and far between to justify a structure whose inaccessibility and string of logistical woes hamper what would otherwise be a genuinely compelling theatrical experience.
Five Unambiguous Signs of the Death of Culture in 2010
If a culture reflects its subjects, it’s more than appropriate that culture in 2010 was more miasma than movement. From ...
A Serious Man
“But I didn’t do anything!” wails the hapless Larry Gopnik, over and over, in an increasingly hysterical register, throughout the ...
Zapruder's Latest Lacks Ambition
Discourse on contemporary poetry tends to revolve around the question of crisis; not as to whether there is a crisis, ...
Pedro Costa's Post-Documentary
Internationally acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa arrives at the Harvard Film Archive (HFA) this Sunday at 7:00 p.m. to present ...
At the End of the Shining Path
Wildly experimental, their music synthesized—through entropy, violence, parody, and a half-ironic sense of the divine.
The Topography of Hell: Roberto Bolaño’s ‘2666’
“The Savage Detectives,” Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s greatest novel, is a kaleidoscopic fictional autobiography—a treatise on youth, love, literature and ...
Editor's Picks 2009
Arts execs take a break from ranking Radiohead vs. Spoon to rank... whatever they feel like.