New Partisan

Motel Art Improvement Service-A Serial Graphic Novel

2008-12-10T15:34:26Z

New Partisan is proud to serialize Jason Little’s graphic novel in progress, Motel Art Improvement Service, a crackling good story that’s somewhere about the border of Hergé and Clowes.

Click the picture to read from the start, or here for the latest installment.

Warning: Not necessarily work safe.

Death in Jersey—The State Against Modern Medicine

2008-12-07T19:33:34Z

If an emergency physician encountered a patient in cardiac arrest, he’d “shock” him and bring him back to life. Presented with the same situation, the state would have a meeting. Then, when the body began to smell, they would have another meeting. Finally, they would dump the body. It was the nature of the state to be bureaucratic. There was nothing more to it than that.

Partisan Video—James

2008-12-06T19:43:57Z

This week’s video feature, by New Partisan regular A.R. Brook Lynn, is a short film about a cash-strapped Greenwich Village mother, Becky (NP contributor Hala Lettieri), and her six-and-a-half-year old daughter, Charlotte (Samantha Becker), on a trip to see her estranged husband, James (Salvatore Interlandi, writer and director of the widely acclaimed Charlie), and try to collect child support. James also features Angela Pietropinto (Welcome to the Dollhouse), and a cameo by New Partisan editor-in-chief Harry Siegel as the mental patient some say he was born to play.

Hell Is Other Hacks

2008-11-29T22:03:22Z

“Just wait until 2009,” the true believer told me as we were departing Tuesday’s mayoral forum on the parks. The prodigal party will return to Gracie Mansion, and all will be made whole.

Old Money

2008-10-25T03:01:14Z

New Partisan is proud to present Lincoln MacVeagh’s now complete serial novel, Old Money, a dark satire in the manner of Evelyn Waugh and Dawn Powell:

“Look Dante, the question I’m getting at is this: Do you love commercial real estate? I don’t think you do.”

“Does anyone love commercial real estate?” asked Dante.

“I should hope so.”

“Do you love it?”

Mr. Bullard answered carefully. “I like it a lot.”

“Then you don’t love it?”

“No, but I care about it. I care deeply about it.”

Mr. Bullard folded his arms across his chest as if daring Dante to disbelieve him. Dante was genuinely puzzled. He hadn’t anticipated this discussion and he stared at Mr. Bullard trying to imagine what it meant to care deeply about commercial real estate.

There was an embarrassing silence before Dante realized where the conversation was headed:

“I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”

Happily Never After, or, The Rubbish Tower

2008-08-09T13:15:02Z

“I want to say something to you or write something about you that would be as beautiful in itself as the life I would have led with you had you loved me.” —Paul Potts in Dante Called You Beatrice.

A Play at Contrition

2007-12-03T02:45:56Z

His hands were in the belly pockets of the coat and as he drew close I noticed that he had a lazy eye. I don’t like to categorize people on the basis of their looks, but this man was a perfect rendering of a pulp novel hustler, appearing dangerous not so much for what he could do physically but, rather, morally.

Losing Evangelicals

2006-11-03T15:35:07Z

After six years of a fellow evangelical in the White House, many no longer take it as a given that the Republican Party and its candidates are in step with Christian values. Mark Foley’s dalliances with pages may be the shorthand for the general discontent, but it’s Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney and Tom Delay, too.

State-By-State Breakdowns-Governorships

2006-11-03T06:10:00Z

As of today, Democrats are favored to pick up six governor’s seats.

State-By-State Breakdowns-The Senate

2006-11-03T05:52:10Z

As of today, Democrats are favored to pick up six seats, just enough to win the Senate.

Pataki and the Incumbocrats

2006-10-23T14:55:27Z

Upstate’s declining population of increasingly elderly and poor remaining residents are no longer consistent conservatives. While Pataki, like Cuomo, has overseen this decline, he’s also clinging to the back of the demographic leviathan.

For David Walley

2006-09-27T14:50:47Z

Like a boxer, he was light on his feet, he hit from the center of his weight outward, and you didn’t know where it was gonna come from, but it always connected.

Bill Travis' New York

2006-09-05T17:30:10Z

Flip through Weegee’s photos to see the city’s violent underbelly, or Berenice Abbott’s for razor-sharp views of the city’s canyons. Look to Michael Wesely for ghostlike, long-term exposures. When I look at Bill Travis’s work, I see something different and the closest parallels I can find are with photographs over a hundred years old.

The Cortelyou Project

2006-06-30T08:15:53Z

Amber Scoon's Cortelyou Project, a series of paintings of what the 2000 census found to be America's most integrated neighborhod.

"Hemingway.... That Shit!" Reconsidering The Sun Also Rises

2006-06-23T21:38:39Z

I must have studied that novel in at least two classes as an undergraduate. In fact, looking at my beat-up copy from back then, I have a sinking feeling that I even had to teach it one year in freshman comp. That was when I had to go over it carefully enough to explain to students what was good about it, and I always had the nagging suspicion that whatever it was, I’d missed it.