Articles by Lisa Borst
23 articles found.
What a Mess!
On the stakes of the personal essay
GAITSKILL The personal essay, according to some, is in a tough spot. Last spring, Jia Tolentino wrote in the New Yorker …
Dear Indy...
Dear Indy, Thoughts on PDA? LB: Despite long being an object of public scrutiny, regulation, judgment, and fantasy, the thing about …
Beneath Your Bootsoles
Feeling backward at New York City's AIDS Memorial
content warning: queerphobia Under the pavement at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 12th Street in Manhattan’s West Village, leading to …
Can't Serve Prestige
Harvard University Dining Services on strike
On Saturday, October 22, a middle-aged man stood in the rain on the corner of John F. Kennedy Street and Memorial …
Notes on Mom Books
Elena Ferrante's Visual Aesthetics
When I was in high school, I worked in a small bookstore in Virginia. I mostly helped out, shelving books and …
Whose Buddy?
Remembering Providence's Infamous Mayor
A corrupt Machiavellian bully, a benevolent populist, a talk radio personality, a marinara-sauce entrepreneur, a meme—rarely does a local politician acquire …
BUSES INTO LAND SHARKS
Alternative Theater in Providence
This is Rapid Transit They changed it last week, the 11 Broad St And the 99 in Pawtucket The opposite of …
EARTH LINKS
Technology, Agriculture, and the Computational Metaphor
We conceive of the Internet mostly through metaphors. Early imaginings of a globally distributed network of information likened the nascent web’s …
WEEK IN CIVILIZATION
No Uglies On a warm autumn day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy sat calmly beside his wife, Jackie, in the …
From the Editors V.30 N.2
Last week, we listened to the warnings of the weathermen. Our mothers called us. We called our mothers. We stockpiled. We …
Sketching the Outlines
Thoughts on The David Foster Wallace Reader
Last week, Little, Brown, & Company released The David Foster Wallace Reader, a sort of Greatest Hits collection of some of …
The Real Dirt on the Baby Carrot
There is a point in the early evening at my parents’ house, an hour or two before dinner, that I’m tempted …
Side with the Seed
A conversation with Spencer Tweedy
“Is this a strictly bandmate relationship, or do you ever have to say, ‘don’t make me pull this tour bus over?’” …
Week in Songbirds
KILLING IN THE NAME OF To a culture accustomed to choosing its favorite restaurants by their Yelp reviews—crowd-sourced, grade-inflated, irredeemably unsophisticated …
You End Up Becoming Yourself
Boyhood and universalizing nostalgia
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, which finished its run at the Cable Car last week, is not afraid to date itself. The film, …
Ditching the Frame
user interface and the blurring of digital boundaries
Art has always favored the rectangle. Since humans began moving our paintings off of cave walls and onto formal and constructed …
We Are What We Waste
legislating food disposal in Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s only landfill is located at the end of a rural road in Johnston, which, when I visited in early …
A New Stage
Recovering Columbus Theatre
Before Misak Berberian bought the Columbus Theatre in 1962, a previous owner, facing financial trouble, allegedly tried to set the building …
Last Thoughts on Pete Seeger
The dynastic folk family has maintained a curious presence throughout the genre’s rich history. There’s Woody and Arlo, Bob and Jakob, …
Brute Choir
an interview with Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Friday, October 11. 7:56 PM. The Columbus Theater. Standing outside the Columbus before seeing Bonnie “Prince” Billy, I witness two bearded, …