Robert Rubsam

1 week ago | robertrubsam.substack.com | Robert Rubsam

It has become standard practice to open a piece like this with the claim that contemporary literature is in trouble. Why is everything so samey, so bland, so—boring? Well, how much time have you got? Just recently, we’ve learned that there are too many women, and too few white men; that publishing is too woke; that people read too many challenging books, but not enough new ones; that men read wimpy books to impress women, when they should be reading .

1 week ago | robertrubsam.substack.com | Robert Rubsam

It has become standard practice to open a piece like this with the claim that contemporary literature is in trouble. Why is everything so samey, so bland, so—boring? Well, how much time have you got? Just recently, we’ve learned that there are too many women, and too few white men; that publishing is too woke; that people read too many challenging books, but not enough new ones; that men read wimpy books to impress women, when they should be reading .

1 week ago | libertiesjournal.com | Robert Rubsam

I visited Manhattan during Labor Day Weekend, 2001, and then returned that November to find the area barricaded by plywood walls, and the walls fliered with the pictures of missing people. Two years later a boiling dread roiled the March of 2003, as America’s futile and illegal invasion of Iraq had become inescapable. Years later I stood on the corner of my small town holding a sign protesting that pointless failed war, and I was called a communist, a terrorist, and a traitor.

2 weeks ago | open.substack.com | Robert Rubsam

Alas, the gold, cold days are behind us, and I have ants. Onward to summer, when the city gets soupy, and the air smells like trash, and I will likely still have ants. It’s been a slow Spring, but I should have many more pieces coming out in the next month or two. For now:I reviewed the Met’s spectacular Caspar David Friedrich exhibition for Commonweal. In my first for Apollo Magazine, I wrote about the super intriguing painter Keita Morimoto, who just had a big show at Almine Rech.

3 weeks ago | defector.com | Robert Rubsam

Gareth Evans is the patron saint of people getting their shit wrecked. In films like Merantau, Apostle, and The Raid diptych, people get chopped by machetes, whacked with broom handles, tossed through floors, kicked into toilets, cracked across concrete tables, and fried on open griddles.