How To Describe an Era
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were
... See more“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” The critic and novelist Namwali Serpell told me that the quotation appeals to her in this moment, even though Žižek’s translation is slightly unfaithful to the original. The phrase “now is the time of monsters,” Serpell said, “allows us to think about the... See more
Kyle Chayka • The Terrible Twenties? The Assholocene? What to Call Our Chaotic Era
Now the 1990s seem like a period when the world was starting to go crazy, but not so crazy that it was unmanageable or irreparable. It was the end of the twentieth century, but also the end to an age when we controlled technology more than technology controlled us. People played by the old rules, despite a growing recognition that t
... See moreChuck Klosterman • The Nineties: A Book
how much injustice, misery, and wrong, there was, and yet how the world rolled on, from year to year, alike careless and indifferent, and no man seeking to remedy or redress it; when he thought of all this, and selected from the mass the one slight case on which his thoughts were bent, he felt, indeed, that there was little ground for hope, and lit
... See moreCharles Dickens • Nicholas Nickleby: By Charles Dickens : Illustrated
The rebellious youth was no longer constrained by the surveillance of the village; he could hide his sins in the protective anonymity of the city crowd.