Timely
College Admissions Scandal As 1930s Screwball Comedy
By J. Cavanaugh Simpson — Depression-era screwball comedies skewered the shallow upper classes with satirical glee. Similar plot lines—updated and adjusted for inflation—offer timely social sabotage of college and class in the unfolding aftermath of the College Admissions Scandal. A few storylines that are, criminally, mostly three-quarters true: Charming conman Rich Slinger—mastermind of madcap slacker student admission scheme—secretly records entitled […]
ON MOVING ON: A Tribute to Capital Gazette journalists
By Ann Costantino Several days ago marked the memorial service for John McNamara, the last of the five Capital Gazette newspaper employees killed about two weeks ago by Jarrod Ramos, whose misdirected rage was aimed squarely at unsuspecting employees who had nothing at all to do with his multi-year resentment toward the paper. The Gazette […]
The Godfather Speaks
I first met author Lee Gutkind at the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers’ Conference at Goucher College when I was a grad student in the mid-1990s. The conference brought together some of the greatest practitioners of a literary form of nonfiction breaking new ground: creative nonfiction. Featured were authors Tracy Kidder. Susan Orlean. Gay Talese. Mary […]
The Trumpian Test
In this new era, what we mean by “mostly true” does not include how one leads a nation (via “alternative facts”). Here a commentary on what an actual disrespect for truth (versus a literary love for storytelling) could do to a society, and how it will test all of us . . . […]
3QR: The Three Quarter Review 