Inside the May 2024 Issue
Daniel Bessner on the end of Hollywood as we know it, Joy Williams on Kafka, Nick Bowlin on the big-money takeover of Big Sky, and more.
May 2024
[ R E P O R T ]
The Life and Death of Hollywood
Film and television writers face an existential threat
by Daniel Bessner
“Profit will of course find a way; there will always be shit to watch. But without radical intervention, whether by the government or the workers, the industry will become unrecognizable. And the writing trade—the kind where one actually earns a living—will be obliterated.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • T H E • C A M P A I G N • T R A I L ]
The Race for Second Place
The Republican primaries as farce
by Kyle Paoletta
“To understand how presidential campaigns are covered in the digital era, it’s necessary to get one popular misconception out of the way: There is no bus. No shared hotel. In short, no access. Theodore White sitting with John F. Kennedy as he watched returns from the Wisconsin primary; John McCain ensconced in the back of the Straight Talk Express, barking, ‘Ask me another question!’; Barack Obama inviting reporters over for a round of beers on the eve of the Iowa caucuses—that age is over.”
[L E T T E R • F R O M • B I G • S K Y ]
Slippery Slope
How private equity shapes a ski town
by Nick Bowlin
“The forces that are remaking the Mountain West—the consolidation of land and wealth in the hands of a few, the circulation of global capital, the substitution of corporate power for civic authority—are uniquely visible in Big Sky, where private interests affect the very structure of the community.”
[ F O L I O ]
The Branson Pilgrim
Wherein our reporter haunts the Vegas of the Ozarks
by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
“There was allure beyond negation. Branson’s geo-cultural attributes—not quite the Midwest or the South or Appalachia yet also all three; a region of old European settlement but also westward expansion—invite an unmistakable imaginative allegiance…No matter the innate fuzziness, Real America in this formula is white, Christian, and prizes independence from the state. It is atavistic, not reactionary.”
[ R E V I E W S ]
The Serene Steamroller
On Kafka
by Joy Williams
“Kafka’s imagination proceeded via the strange non-narrative manner of dreams, and he cultivated this, trusted it, pursued it to its ultimate fate. He created his own kabbalah linking his subjective self, with its profoundly innocent depths of being, to the obdurate mechanics of the world’s appearances. The words he employs are simple and sturdy enough but they explode and refract, illuminating and obfuscating at once.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
by Hari Kunzru
[ T H E • H A R P E R ‘ S • I N D E X ]
[ R E A D I N G S ]
and more...
[ F R O M • T H E • A R C H I V E ]
by Patricia Aufderheide
[ F I C T I O N ]
by Camille Bordas
by Dan Piepenbring
[ P U Z Z L E ]
by Richard E. Maltby Jr.
See the full table of contents