I bought my first Christian Bible at a used bookstore. It felt like buying porn. It was difficult to overcome my reluctance to read the New Testament, almost a superstitious avoidance of a bunch of words on the page. I was only willing to confront the text through the prophylactic of an academic experience, done …
Author Archives: ivan@ivantohelpyou.com
The Honeymoon Album
“How do you do, fellow kids?”
Yesterday, I posted a book review from six years ago on Mitchell Duneier’s Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea. Reading old work can be, as the kids say, cringe. And I expect this very post will make me cringe in 2028. My cringeworthy book review contains hip-hop lyrics, extended digressions …
If you ain’t ever been to the ghetto
Originally published at The Seattle Review of Books, June 8, 2016. If you ain’t ever been to the ghettoDon’t ever come to the ghetto’Cause you wouldn’t understand the ghettoAnd stay the **** out of the ghetto “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” (1991), Naughty by Nature Mitchell Duneier’s Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an …
Smokey and the Bandit 2027 (a 50th anniversary reboot)
“In Smokey and the Bandit (1977), the overweight southern cop – so long an image of racialized abuse and white supremacy, and played brilliantly by Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night (1967) – became a comic figure who pursued white bandits, not black men or civil rights workers.” Deborah Barker & Kathryn …
Continue reading “Smokey and the Bandit 2027 (a 50th anniversary reboot)”
Don’t Call Me Woke. I’m Sleepless.
Adapted from 2015 journals “Cast down your bucket where you are.” – Booker T. Washington, 1895. Borrowing a stack of books on African American History. The university librarian at the desk turns deliberately and carefully through all the pages, annotating existing marks. The unspoken message: If you damage these pages, it’s on you. As difficult …
Two childhood stories
“That which is hateful to you do not do to others. All the rest is commentary. Now go and learn.” Hillel The Casio Digital Watch Two months into first grade, our family moved from northeastern Pennsylvania to Montclair, N.J., which had just integrated the school system with busing and magnet schools. I had never met …
The weed-out course
What’s your story? We drove from Pittsburgh to Mazatlan for Spring Break. Four college sophomores in a Jeepster. 7,800 miles in 10 days. Adventure, danger, romance, comedy, la tequila, las drogas, una pistola. No arrests, no fatalities. You want a story? Oh, we’ve got a story. But not yet. What’s your major? I started Carnegie …
It all works out, in theory
Originally published by Seattle Review of Books, February 7, 2018 How do you enter the conversation among generations of Continental philosophers? Learn the lingo — and bring a bodyguard. In The Seventh Function of Language, Laurent Binet depicts the big names in 1980s literary theory — Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Bernard-Henri Lévy — as …
Thoughts on AI Art
Based on “Anonymity of a Murmur” how do you view/what are your thoughts on all the AI art out there? Apostasy X Fnord “Anonymity of a Murmur” was posted on Wednesday, but I’ve already moved on from Foucault and it’s too late to turn back now. But you’re in luck, sister, because we are now …