The Short Century

Though best known for his nonfiction—his 2019 biography of the diplomat Richard Holbrooke was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize—George Packer has just published a novel, The Emergency, which wrestles with the reality of Trump and Trumpism. Described by the author as a “political fable,” the book is, Daniel Bessner writes for Books & the Arts, Packer’s attempt “to convey what it feels like today…to watch a world you thought would always be there because it had always been there disappear before your eyes with a speed that you can’t begin to fathom.” In this way, it tells a broader story—one of how the 2024 results forced liberals to reconsider many of their presuppositions. But,Bessner concludes,that “The Emergency is useful, albeit not in the way Packer intended. The light it sheds is on the limits of a liberal imagination indifferent to both the causes of and the solutions to our current crisis.” Read “George Packer’s Liberal Imagination”

Bad Vibes

Sarah Chihaya went to a screening of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Cathy and Heathcliff, “expecting a vibe—and in this aspect, at the very least, it does not disappoint. The film lacks a lot of things…but one thing it does succeed in is feeling like the times”: Like so much of our media today, it turns complex and haunting stories into easy tales of romance, “smooth-brained,” and ready for replication on vertical video platforms. “Fennell ignores the novel’s very real and present concerns with class, race, and heredity because that is what she thinks her moment is asking of her. This film may not be Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, but it certainly feels like something.” Read “The Bad Vibes of “Wuthering Heights””