Erin isn't sure Elf can carry half an hour. Wes did the reading anyway. It went about as well as you'd expect. (sub)Text · The Meaning of Christmas Spirit in “Elf” (2003)

Wes has been calling it a one-year vacation. Erin points out that the play is fairly clear the man has tuberculosis. His diagnosis of himself is quicker than his diagnosis of Torvald. (sub)Text · The Door Slam Heard ‘Round the World: Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”

Tiresias tells Oedipus he will end up in "a grim equality between you and your children." Wes on why, in Sophocles, thinking your way out of your fate is already a kind of incest — the self-made man as a man who has generated himself. (sub)Text · Autonomy and Incest in…

A 12th-century wife tells her husband she stays up all night at the window to hear the nightingale sing. He believes her. Then he sets traps in every tree. Marie de France's 'Laustic', in sixty seconds. (sub)Text · Courtly Reciprocity in “Laustic” and “Guigemar” by Marie de…

The first thing Martha does in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is quiz her husband on a movie title — and she doesn't know the answer either. Erin on why that's the whole marriage in thirty seconds. (sub)Text · Better and Bested in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Did you believe in Santa? Wes never did, and he has questions. Erin thinks that explains a lot. Our two-part close-reading of Elf begins. (sub)Text · The Meaning of Christmas Spirit in “Elf” (2003)

Animals run for their lives and then nap under a tree. We can't. Wes on why art should feel like rest, and why it so rarely does. The Jerboa, part two. (sub)Text · Aesthetic Humility in Marianne Moore’s “The Jerboa” (Part 2)

What counts as a Christmas movie? Erin has two rules, and under them Fellowship of the Ring qualifies. Part two of our close-reading of Elf. (sub)Text · The Meaning of Christmas Spirit in “Elf” (2003) – Part 2

A grown man tries to explain what reading Shakespeare does to him and lands on a comparison he immediately has to insist he means seriously. (sub)Text · Love and Wit in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”

What do you call a government ruled by a stage magician? Oz is full of real magic — witches, talking trees, apples that throw themselves at you — and the man in charge is the only one with no powers at all. (sub)Text · Prestidigitocracy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)

Dostoevsky's Underground Man plays chicken with a stranger on the sidewalk rather than step aside. Turns out this is still happening. (sub)Text · “Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: An Anatomy of Human Self-Destructiveness (Part 1)

Why is Hildy Johnson the best reporter in the press room in HIS GIRL FRIDAY? Not because she's tougher than the men. Because she can actually see the people she's writing about. (And because, obviously, you always go with Cary Grant.) (sub)Text · Production for Use in “His…

"Bathing is a lonely business." "Except for the fish — but the fish tend to eat one another." One throwaway line in ARTHUR (1981) contains the entire problem of being with other people. (sub)Text · Love and Loneliness in “Arthur” (1981) – Part 2

Why is fortune-telling a sin? Erin on the witches in Macbeth, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the idea that time itself is holy — so trying to leap ahead of it is wicked by definition. (sub)Text · Yielding to Suggestion in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”

Odysseus has lost his crew, his ship, twenty years of his life — and Homer says the worst thing a human being suffers is homelessness. Not the shipwrecks. The homelessness. On desperate hunger, and why we're all wandering. (sub)Text · Terminal Wooings in “The Odyssey” (Part 3…

The office Christmas party in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT (1960) set some unrealistic expectations for at least one of us. (sub)Text · Expediency and Intimacy in Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” (1960)

Elizabeth Bennet as a Borscht Belt comedian? Erin's case that Austen's heroine is running a stand-up routine on Regency England — poking fun at people while letting them think whatever they like. (sub)Text · Marital Economics in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”

Auden wrote "We must love one another or die" — then spent years trying to get rid of it. His stated reason: we're all going to die anyway. Erin on the fix he tried, and on what Brodsky says the line actually means. (sub)Text · Clever Hopes in W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939”

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? There are only two criteria — an epic struggle between good and evil, and snow. Nakatomi Plaza gets its snow, technically. (sub)Text · Attachments “Die Hard” at Nakatomi Tower

"She had a very stern talk with me. She was like: meow, meow, meow." A domestic drama in three acts, a slammed door, and the phrase that has followed Ibsen for a hundred and forty years. (sub)Text · The Door Slam Heard ‘Round the World: Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”