My Quarantine

My Quarantine: Cozy Mysteries

Even though my family and I are safely housed, and my own case of Covid-19 has been relatively mild, I see the shadow of prolonged illness all around us, and I’ve instinctively returned to my cozy mysteries.

May 31, 2020

My Quarantine: More Time Now?

Despite the assumption, hostile to me, that we have “more time now,” I still prefer television shows under thirty minutes.

May 21, 2020

My Quarantine: Cannes, Interrupted

Lockdown possibility for a new cinematic discovery: the Russian writer-director Kantemir Balagov, a protégé of the last Soviet master Alexander Sokurov, not yet thirty and possibly the most arresting young filmmaker to emerge in the last few years.

May 13, 2020

My Quarantine: Savoring the Ramen Western

Tampopo’s ode to the oral ends with a shot of a woman breastfeeding on a sunny park bench. As the credits roll, the camera closes in on the blissful face of the firmly latched infant. Suck, slurp, lick, share: these are joys of living.

May 8, 2020

My Quarantine: Obsessed with Oil Painting

I had earth-moving revelations as I graduated from using makeup brushes to real sable, and switched from canvas to linen panels. My formerly adorable kitchen now looks as though Francis Bacon had assaulted a pope in it.

April 29, 2020

My Quarantine: The Calm of Collaging

Collage is a scavenger’s art: it forms the dead matter of the past into combinations that could only occur in the present; it builds a future from ruins.

April 23, 2020