Questions concerning the 2013 remake of The Sound of Music
This December, NBC will feature a (capitalist-driven, ill-advised, awful-looking) live(!) version of Rogers and Hammerstein’s beloved classic, The Sound of Music. Premiering on Broadway in 1959 with an Oscar-winning 1965 … Continue reading
Dear Peter Capaldi: This Is Why You Make Me Nervous
Letters of love (or something like it) is our running series expressing love and admiration (and other things) for those unlikely to respond. Dear Peter, It’s the elephant in the … Continue reading
Notes on Reading the Iliad While Watching Game of Thrones
You settle in to the couch and feel pleasantly cultured, with a copy of Lattimore’s translation in one hand and the full cast of Britain’s Next Top Model in front of … Continue reading
Party Like It’s 1922: Great Gatsby’s Guide to Partying with 100 of Your Most Sophisticated Friends
By now, unless you are living under a rock without Wifi, you have an opinion of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Perhaps you found Luhrmann’s 3-D film adaptation of F. … Continue reading
The Gaudy Interview: Matthew Goodman
Matthew Goodman is the author of three best-selling works of nonfiction. His latest project, Eighty Days: Nelly Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World has been published to wide … Continue reading
What Gaudy’s Reading: Week of July 4
We thought we’d take a day to make a list (in the spirit of Sontag) of what we’re reading this week. Great Literature, Works of Whimsy Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (Hannah) – Two years … Continue reading
Cooking with Cooked: Michael Pollan and the Power of Metaphor
For me, the smell of summer is the smell of time, wafting, lollygagging: time to roam thrift stores, read about productivity and St. Augustine, and time to cook. Cooking is … Continue reading
The Burning of the Globe and Other Tales
When the Globe Theatre burned down four hundred years ago on June 29, 1613, no one died. According to the letters of English author and diplomat Henry Wotton who was … Continue reading
Rosie the Riveter Meets Harriet Vane: Reflections on the Class of 2013 and Dorothy L. Sayers
The class of 2013 have been commenced. Oprah and Agent Seeley Booth shared their advice, Grandma and Granddad have taken their photos, celebratory vacations have been celebrated, and now the … Continue reading
Blessed Assurance: Death Comes to Pemberley as Relief
After the terrible and tragic week in Boston sports, I needed something about which I could get excited. That something quickly became the upcoming BBC miniseries, Death Comes to Pemberley, … Continue reading
The Gaudy Interview: Shavanna Calder
Shavanna Calder is an award-winning actress originally from Northern California. You may have seen her in the Networks national tour of Hairspray the musical as any of the Dynamites or Little … Continue reading
Some Notes on Attempting to Watch Romantic Comedies Without Guilt
1. Is it made by a filmmaker respected for contributions to the cinematic mode? The Coen Brothers made Intolerable Cruelty open with Geoffrey Rush in a ponytail, and you can’t … Continue reading
In Conversation With: In Defense of the Liberal Arts
In Conversation With is our series responding to pieces in the national media. Today, we’re looking at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences report to the U.S. Congress, “The … Continue reading
The Gaudy Interview: Ethan Rutherford
Ethan Rutherford’s fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, and The Best American Short Stories. Born in Seattle, he now lives in Minneapolis with his wife and … Continue reading
Fathers and Sons: Bloomsday 2013
There is a moment near the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses where the narratives of the two oscillating central figures finally converge, meeting and conversing in the same place after … Continue reading
In Conversation With: Shakespeare Revisited
In Conversation With is our new series responding to pieces in national media. Today, we’re taking a look at recent reviews of Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing and the general … Continue reading
The Gaudy Interview: Mason Currey
Mason Currey is the author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), an intriguing study of the daily routines practiced by artists, writers, philosophers, scientists, poets, and others. His … Continue reading
Letters of love (or something like it): David Brooks
The latest installment of our continuing series of love letters to people, places, or products who we revere—but who will never love us back. Dear David, You might not know … Continue reading
In Conversation With: The Cocktail Party Trap
In Conversation With is our new series responding to pieces in national media. Today we’re taking a look at Ian Crouch’s The Curse of Reading and Forgetting in The New … Continue reading
The Gaudy Commencement: June 2013
Dear Friends, Followers, Readers, Collaborators and Conspirators: We are ones for grand gestures and mad manifestos. We appreciate stereos upheld on suburban lawns, “We the Peoples,” and Aaron Sorkin monologues. … Continue reading
The Cult of the Bluths: Welcome to the Arrested Development fandom
Now the story of a girl who was depressed when her favorite show was cancelled, and the day it came back with fifteen episodes all at once. It’s Hannah’s arrested … Continue reading
In Conversation With: Dante, Dan Brown, and the Paradox of Familiarity
In Conversation With is our new series where we reflect and respond to pieces in national media. This week, we’re looking at Joan Acocella’s essay “What the Hell?” a consideration of … Continue reading
On Rewatching “Monty Python” and Mocking the French
In the first moments of the television documentary Typically British, director Stephen Frears mentions French auteur Francois Truffaut’s famous suggestion that there was “a certain incompatibility between the terms … Continue reading
Some Notes on the Acquisition of Books at the Library
The evening (it must be evening, for that is when the sense of book starvation is most acute) is now twilight. You leave the house in a light sweater and … Continue reading
In Conversation With: Relationships Are More Important Than Ambition, According To…
In Conversation With is our new series reflecting on and responding to pieces in the national news. Today we’re considering the nature of cultural authority in “Relationships Are More Important Than … Continue reading
What Kind of Day Has It Been.
I know, I know, we’ve been terrible and delinquent for months on end now. But with one editor completing a monumental thesis, and the other settling her graduate school plans … Continue reading
gaudy. 
Having It All Over Again: Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Esquire Argument
We’re having the “Have it all” debate again. While perusing wedding blogs for no practical reason, I stumbled upon Richard Dorment’s latest piece for Esquire, entitled “Why Men Still Can’t … Continue reading →