Christian Lorentzen, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

Av med boksehanskene

4 weeks ago | op.no | Christian Lorentzen

Spaltist Allerede før fylkestinget får saken om ny skolestruktur til behandling i juni, er det avklart at musikk-, danse- og dramalinjene (MDD) ved Thor Heyerdahl vgs. og Greveskogen vgs. får bestå. Dette etter bred politisk enighet. Det skulle bare mangle – det er et klokt valg, både for elevene, skolene og samfunnet. Selv om boksehanskene nå er tatt av, for andre gang på fem år, må vi ikke glemme hvorfor denne boksekampen var nødvendig.
ARRESTED REDEVELOPMENT

1 month ago | christianlorentzen.substack.com | Christian Lorentzen

LONDON—Fathers who are bastards yet lovable and soon to die; mothers who are distant yet caring, if not dead, in which case they died caring, we’re sure of that; children who are prematurely mature, with grievances; romanticized visions of the moment before puberty; chase scenes; sets like dollhouses; soundtracks consisting of sophisticated pop music or basic classical music; nested framing devices, usually an old book or a playbill, or a playbill inside an old book found in a shoebox and...
The AI Book Recommendation List Isn't About AI

1 month ago | tedthoughts.substack.com | Christian Lorentzen

The discourse lamp has been lit by the Chicago Sun Times’ running an AI-generated summer reading list that includes a few books that don’t exist, including The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir which is a shame because I honestly would have read that.
CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN'S DIARY

1 month ago | christianlorentzen.substack.com | Christian Lorentzen

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A SNOWBALL IN HELL

1 month ago | christianlorentzen.substack.com | Christian Lorentzen

NEW BEDFORD, MASS.—It is better to write about the past than the future. There is a record of the past and the future is unknowable. I was wrong when I ventured into predictions about the presidential election last fall, wrong about Trump as a “spent force,” and perhaps wrong about the utility of the “fascism thesis,” though that might be a case of the Republicans deciding that if the shoe fits they might as well try it on.
“Stranger Than Fiction” by Edwin Frank: Book Review

Nov 15, 2024 | airmail.news | Christian Lorentzen

Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank Toward the end of her 2008 essay “Two Paths for the Novel,” on the schism in contemporary literature between realism and conceptual fiction, Zadie Smith lists a few authors to be found in the middle.
Book Review: ‘Lazarus Man,’ by Richard Price - The New York Times

Nov 15, 2024 | nytimes.com | Christian Lorentzen

“Lazarus Man” follows several characters in Harlem in the wake of a building collapse.
Barnehagesalg i Larvik: En risikofylt vei full av usikkerhet

Oct 29, 2024 | op.no | Christian Lorentzen |Larvik Arbeiderparti

Debattinnlegg Som innbygger og lokalpolitiker i Larvik er jeg dypt bekymret for den foreslåtte planen om å selge majoriteten av de kommunale barnehagene i Larvik. Det er knyttet stor usikkerhet til den økonomiske gevinsten ved et salg av barnehagene. Er det realistisk å oppnå den forventede salgsprisen? Hvordan vil eventuelle endringer i tilskuddssatser påvirke kommunens langsiktige økonomi?
Gary Indiana: An Appreciation

Oct 25, 2024 | nytimes.com | Christian Lorentzen

Crimes, deviations from the norm, the transgressive actions of human animals caught in the vises of history, loneliness, desperation, lust, psychosis, exhaustion or terror - these were the subjects (some of them) of Gary Indiana's fiction, a tremendous outpouring left unfinished after his death on Thursday at 74. He was born Gary Hoisington in rural New Hampshire in 1950, out of place and at the wrong time, but we all have to be born somewhere.
THE TRUMP ERA IS OVER

Sep 10, 2024 | christianlorentzen.substack.com | Christian Lorentzen

FLATBUSH—If there was one thing that united the delegates, politicians, lobbyists, consultants, journalists, and other hacks at the Democratic Convention last month in Chicago, it was that we (sorry) were all once the sort of schoolchildren who were keen to know all the states of the Union and perhaps be able to rattle off a series of facts about them.