Articles by Benj DeMott

in 1856, Walt Whitman predicted the coming of a race of fierce and athletic girls …tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds, Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength. They are ultimate in their own right–they are calm, clear …well possess’d of themselves. at the time pretty much everyone thought … Read more

For a guy who once conceded nothing to Holden Caulfield when it came to abhorring the “phoney,” it takes a well-seasoned blend of irony and humor to walk around sporting designer-distressed boots, jeans and safari jacket. But I am over-seventy, a serene sail toward a gradual retirement from the practice of law hastened by the … Read more

Up until 9th grade, math was one of my favorite subjects. Like most people, I loved the palpable rightness of its solutions. Then I went to a magnet science & tech high school, and suddenly I sucked at math because big brain robotoid kids with underdeveloped social skills were the majority of the student body. … Read more

Bob Liss finished this report on LeBron James’s role in last season’s NBA playoffs a few days before James announced he was “going home” to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers next season. Liss takes in the news in his postscript to this piece. Just a year ago, with the Miami Heat joyfully repeating as NBA … Read more

The costumes are wrong. They have to be discarded. We have to start out naked again and go from there. —Playwright Wallace Shawn, from the essay “Why I Call Myself a Socialist” Tom and Sasha, the romantically linked protagonists of Benjamin Kunkel’s play Buzz, share a loft apartment (the play’s sole setting) in a borderline-sketchy … Read more

Ms. Levin completed a manuscript about her life as a tennis fan and player (Comeback) a few years ago. She picked up on the beauty of Roger Federer’s game early in his career and her text tells the story of her responsiveness to him. What follows are Federer-focused passages from her tennis memoir. Take it … Read more

I “Yo’r my pride and joy…Everything for a growing boy.” Al Green chuckles at his own double entendre (cum Marvin Gaye reference). “That’s extra,” he teases, adding a phallic riff to the polymorphous plenitudes of his 1973 live concert on Soul. The flow of the sexiest singer ever is beyond quid pro quos. Green embodies … Read more