Illustration by Ard SuDecember 11, 2024 ShareSave Listen-1.0x+0:008:19Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (Noa) using AI narration often intended to be judged by their covers Their jacket flaps include marketing copy designed to entice a browser to buy (and like many attempts to summarize compelling stories rarely convey the excitement of reading a book that genuinely surprises you Perhaps a better introduction to a title is no introduction—a friend saying “trust me,” for instance A great book is still great even if you don’t know much about it going in I would venture to say that the sensation of encountering any book for the first time is heightened by knowing nothing—and that for some books a lack of knowledge feels almost essential to the experience Certain stories are such a bolt from the blue that their readers should aim to approach them with no information about what’s to come Some are genre novels accompanied by the fair expectation of a shock Others present themselves as one type of narrative but turn out to be entirely another you can safely assume that the six titles below will offer many kinds of twists—but each richly rewards those travelers who choose to navigate without a map Trust Exercise had the enviable experience of encountering its narrative acrobatics with no preparation its status as an exemplar of fiction that upends expectations tips the reader off that there’s something unusual about it set at a competitive performing-arts high school in the 1980s The trope of the toxic drama teacher rears its head: David and Sarah’s enigmatic acting teacher manipulates their emotions and desires in the name of art The way Trust Exercise flips these events in the novel’s second half casting them in an entirely different light is an emotionally unsettling experience that opens up provocative questions about ethics The novel delights in withholding easy answers The title is not merely a drama-class game but a literal description of the book’s contents Read: In defense of spoilers Trust ExerciseBy Susan ChoiBuy Book Lexicon, by Max Barry LexiconBy Max BarryBuy Book On Writing ostensibly fulfills the promise of its subtitle: A Memoir of the Craft King calls the book “a kind of curriculum vitae” that blends autobiographical scenes with practical advice (One particular tidbit that stayed with me as a younger writer: Every author has a single ideal reader whom they should keep in mind as they work.) Yet King cannot stop himself from employing horror he was prone to illness and taken to the doctor for painful eardrum lancings The terror only grows as King narrates the pitfalls of his adulthood such as his addictions and then his unexpected grueling recovery from a near-fatal accident What begins as a book on writing with some personal material woven in ends up feeling like—what else?—a Stephen King novel Readers who come to it for the advice alone will be rewarded and shaken by the storytelling that follows Read: How Stephen King teaches writing On Writing: A Memoir of the CraftBy Stephen KingBuy Book To Name the Bigger Lie, by Sarah Viren To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two StoriesBy Sarah VirenBuy Book Natural Beauty Huang’s debut novel is set in the wellness industry abandons a promising future as a concert pianist to support her parents after an accident which carries products that are unnaturally effective As the narrator gets more involved with the family who founded the company she discovers quintessential hints that something is amiss: evidence of animal experimentation in the laboratory and dramatic physical transformations among the clientele her financial dependence on the job—and her growing entanglement with the founders—makes it difficult for her to walk away When the force behind this company’s ethos and practices is finally revealed it feels at once shocking and foretold from the start Read: You may be surprised by what scares you Natural BeautyBy Ling Ling HuangBuy Book Consent ConsentBy Jill CimentBuy Book When you buy a book using a link on this page Pennsylvania and passed away peacefully in Rockville 2024. He is survived by his wife of almost 50 years three children; Laird Billstein (Hawthorne VT) and Sarah Billstein (Hirsch Isen) of Gaithersburg as well as his sister Marjorie Katz (Yarmouth ME). He is also survived by his beloved grandchildren Asher Isen (age 12) and Eitan Isen (age 10) of Gaithersburg Stephan was born in Philadelphia to his loving parents Beatrice and Sandford Billstein. He adored his grandmother who often took him to the opera as he grew up. This developed into a lifelong adoration of performing arts which he shared with his wife and passed on to his children and grandchildren Stephan attended Penn State for College and immediately enrolled in Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia from which he graduated in 1967. After completing his internship and residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital and in Reno Nevada he enlisted as a Captain in the United States Army He went off and served in Korea in a MASH Unit helping both the citizens of Korea and fellow soldiers. Upon his honorable discharge from the Army California where he went on to complete two Master’s Degrees at University of California Berkeley in Public Health and Epidemiology he worked under Governor Ronald Reagan as Director of Public Health for Sacramento County. He also met his bride to be Susan and her young sons Laird and Bevan whom he later adopted. Susan and Stephan worked together in the 1970s as volunteers raising money and providing medical care for the Free Medical Clinic at Haight Ashbury. Following the birth of their daughter Stephan began working for the pharmaceutical industry where he remained for the rest of his career NJ in 1984. During his thirty or so years in Pharmaceuticals market and gain FDA approval for many lifesaving and well-known medications. Most notably he played a major role in bringing Rocephin (Ceftriaxone) to market In 2016 Stephan and Susan moved to Leisure World in Silver Spring Asher and Eitan. Stephan lived out these eight years enjoying bridge games and social gatherings with friends he made in Leisure World. Most of all he treasured every moment with family especially his grandkids. Stephan loved and cared for all those around with his whole heart and was an encyclopedia of knowledge. His unwavering ability to care for others and devotion to learning are evident in the lives of his children and grandchildren. We thank you Dad for all you have given. We will continue to speak of you often and try to give selflessly of ourselves as you so often did We use cookies to personalize content and ads and to analyze our traffic and improve our service In Tajja Isen's debut book, Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service (Atria) she draws from her own experiences in the fields of animation and publishing to examine the language of today’s social justice movements and the gray area between what we say and what we do Her essays explore topic ranging from the problem of using waxing progressive language for the sake of waxing progressive language (usually in the interest of saving face) to what it means to actually do the work and commit to finding solutions that serve those who needs them most She brings direct attention to the many ways in which society could acknowledge the need for change but make only cosmetic corrections instead of addressing the deep-seated rot underneath and her own lived experiences—all while finding Its author—our host—will always have a seat at her table for you Greg Mania One of the many things I love about this book is how you seamlessly blend comprehensive research Maybe I’m just selfish and want thirty memoirs from you but have you gotten to know the memoirist in you a bit more Tajja Isen That’s really perceptive of you to ask because I had to drag the personal into this book kicking and screaming “Where are you?” I was so focused on proving to some imagined reader (probably just me) that I was qualified to write this book at all I’d focused on the critical sources and wrote myself out almost entirely the next pass was very much about getting to know the memoirist in me Maybe that sounds weird to say as somebody who had published a few personal essays before writing this book But I’ve always been inclined to treat my experience as on par with other kinds of sources rather than the central line One of the many gifts this book has given me is that it pushed me to think beyond that approach I was surprised to find I wanted to keep exploring the personal It still has those hybrid elements of research and criticism but it’s really exciting to work on something that puts self-exploration and self-analysis at the heart of the project GM I can’t just move on after you just spilled some tea on your next book TI Teach me this memoir spell; there are some people I need to use it on and it’s about my recurring pattern of being attracted to intense controlling mentorship bonds and how that relationship gets represented culturally; the many ways it can veer off-track it’s about being dominated—and liking it!—but how that’s usually not a sustainable script for living your life One of the things that makes your first book such a knockout is your humor—it’s so sharp What about it makes it such a useful tool of criticism for you I am absolutely trying to crack more jokes in this interview in the hopes of making you laugh I find a lot of the subjects I write about in Some of My Best Friends inherently funny But “funny” isn’t the way they tend to appear in the zeitgeist Whenever there’s some kind of public failure of equity the tone of the discourse understandably tends to be resigned ashamed—all feelings that shut conversation down rather than open it up I wanted to approach it differently: to avoid making the reader feel called out or discouraged You don’t have to have experienced systemic oppression firsthand to observe the weirdness of how it operates in the world—in fact believing you have to have experienced it in order to understand or even talk about it needlessly closes the door on solidarity Not to mention the size of the audience (ahem “Which Black people should we send this to?”) The shapes that organizations bend themselves into in order to be perceived as even a little bit progressive are hilarious I really wanted to use humor to tap into that shared sensation of How has your relationship with your book changed since it was initially published in 2022 TI You know the way people sometimes talk about romantic relationships like they’re on par with manual labor Keeping the spark alive should feel like pushing a boulder up a hill and also make sure to schedule sex x times per week I oppose that framework with my entire being Not the idea that the relationship shouldn’t be fun; just acknowledging that it can be hard with the relentless forward logic of the publishing industry to maintain a bond with your previous work (and self) that feels generous and fresh and I get off on constantly pushing my boundaries There is nothing more motivating to me than the idea that the next thing I write might feel truer or more alive or even just different from what came before But I have to make sure the drive toward growth doesn’t translate into shitting on my past work I’ve become more purposeful about staying alive to the things I love about it like its commitment to style and its resistance to easy conclusions Doing that work can take various forms: Opening the book or reading a page and letting myself laugh and reading the blurbs as my reminder that I am fortunate to be in community with people whose work I deeply admire What I’m describing is not dissimilar from scheduled intimacy (!!) GMI am on a campaign for all of us to stop cringing at our past work I used to refuse to revisit my first book for so long because I was like But I’ve learned to look back on twenty-something-year-old me with love and fondness and realize that it was the book he needed to write at the time I would write a completely different book today—that means you’re growing as a writer and as a person What a joy and privilege it is to be alive at the same time as one another witnessing each other grow into the versions of ourselves we were born to become TI The greater horror would be looking back on our past work and being like but one who is widely known for being a delight to work with Did you find it challenging to not self-edit this book along the way It could’ve gone either way: I could’ve been known for being good to work with or for being a hardass which is more the way I relate to myself as an editor I respect and envy writers who can abandon themselves to a draft from the jump I have had to adapt my process to reflect the fact that my editor and writer selves are inextricable Especially when I’m starting a new project or piece confirms for me that there’s something there worth chasing Only then can I trick myself into letting go at which point my inner editor comes back with an ax to grind GM Where are some of your favorite places this book has taken you since publishing it—and they don’t necessarily have to be physical locations GM Our community is literally what keeps me going but when you’re trying to navigate the actual business of writing You pour all your love and energy into your art and are often met with [insert literally any genre or type of book here] is just not selling right now when hasn’t it been tough?) It can be really easy to get discouraged but nothing makes my well overflow faster than walking into a reading and seeing our wildly talented friends share their work and sharing our frustrations and ambitions and goals and joys and we need to remember that we are what pumps the blood into this business TI Did you read that essay by Isle McElroy, on literary friendships As books coverage declines and more of the pressure to sell a book falls to writers and that infuriating refrain of “the market is tough right now” gets repeated more and more I definitely feel a consensus among my writer friends that Did anything surprise you about the publishing process for this book I know a fair bit about the ins and outs of the publishing industry from working in and around it I was trying to be the Jane Lynch meme: “I am going to create a book about race that it so impossible to pigeonhole.” the force of that pigeonholing still bowled me over So did the sheer number of ways it crops up and the effort it takes to push back against it which Black people should we send this to?” Copy that calls me “Multiracial writer Tajja Isen …” Outlets and invitations that only cared to hear from me about some racist conflict in the news Publishing is famously hungry for stories about and by people who are underrepresented by the industry But I’m not sure how well it sets these writers up for success GM In the essay “Tiny White People” you write I would have never said I was writing for white people I wrote against them and against the sort of work I imagined they expected from me.” You then go on to detail the weight of the white gaze you feel every time you open a blank document and how traditionally marginalized artists feel a pressure to be a mouthpiece for the identity markers they claim I’m still figuring out my relationship with it.” What have you figured out since writing this essay I was feeling that pressure acutely because I was writing the essay for a second time Speaking of being kind to past versions of yourself: I’ve written “Tiny White People” before when it was first published in Electric Literature and it’s a not insignificant part of why I was able to sell the book When I opened up the document to update it I realized that’s not the way I think anymore Because “Tiny White People” 1.0 kind of did the identity-mouthpiece thing It was the type of argument that traveled online at the time: representation matters But I’m no longer at a point where I’m comfortable making that the axis of my argument I think rewriting that essay and publishing the book were both a sort of exorcism for those questions about representation and the white gaze and how they affect my work those pressures are always going to be there You can do as I did and think ten steps ahead and set up every paranoid defense you can imagine A certain type of reader will still read you as a mouthpiece for a minoritized experience But publishing this book and fighting for the version of it I wanted to see in the world helped me decouple from those expectations I feel purified of the pressure and also of the need to write about it in a self-reflexive way but I’m done with letting it make me tiptoe around it GM This book has taught you so much about yourself TI It has taught me what it means to think and write at the scale of a book It has taught me what it means to have a vision and stick to it especially in the face of market pressures that would have me do otherwise I’m grateful to have these things as part of my artistic toolkit Sounding one’s depths is a gift I wish for every creative person Greg Mania is the author of Born to Be Public He is a contributing editor for BOMB based in Los Angeles In this episode of Micro, Kirsten Reneau talks to Tajja Isen about her essay collection Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service Subscribe and listen in full I honestly retreated from memoir for some time it was really about finding the right voice Sometimes you put something on the page and you’re like I think it was because the book is so interested in this pattern that I’ve observed in so many areas of culture where different things suddenly started speaking in leftist language without backing that up with action that provided a really useful lens for looking at my own experience and showing me how much of the personal I wanted to let in And just absurdity of that setup also helped me find the very comic Micro is edited and curated by Dylan Evers and produced and hosted by Drew Hawkins. Theme song is by Matt Ordes. Follow the show on Twitter at @podcastmicro Tajja Isen is the editor-in-chief of Catapult magazine and the author of the essay collection Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service Braiding cultural criticism with personal narrative the book is about how industries—like entertainment and publishing—have gotten very canny about speaking the language of social justice but don’t always follow through Kirsten Reneau is a writer, teacher, and interviewer. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 2021 and lives there now with her dog. Her personal work can be found online at http://www.kirstenreneau.com Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature Masthead About Sign Up For Our Newsletters How to Pitch Lit Hub Privacy Policy Support Lit Hub - Become A Member Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving These terms and ideologies have hit the zeitgeist in recent years, but when institutions that are built on not being any of these things use such social justice jargon we're reminded that it's all just a load of bull That's at the core of Tajja Isen's debut collection of essays "Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service" (One Signal which reminds us that this overused language is sometimes just that. Isen's book also confronts the reader, reminding us we can be just as guilty of using the buzzword of the week and not following through with actions outside of social media posts. media companies and even popular food brands shared their calls to action on social media in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and issued blanket statements promising to look within to change the system it's hard to tell if the work was done. 20 must-read spring books from Viola Davis, Janelle Monáe, Robin Roberts, Don Winslow and more Ted Cruz grilled Ketanji Brown Jackson on 'Antiracist Baby': Here's why you should read it "Take the flexible use of the world antiracism whose colloquial meaning has been diluted from 'actively opposing violence' into a synonym for 'being nice and buying stuff.' Or elevating art by Black creators solely for what it says about trauma but not for what it says about beauty or what it means to be alive," Isen writes progressive language is closer to foundational myth…" publishing and voice acting – and with a law school education – the Canadian writer's fascination with language comes as no surprise Isen looks at the gaps between "what we say and what we do what we value and what we imagine to be possible." Isen's nine essays take on the cartoon industry ditching colorblind casting (in 2020, Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell stepped down from voicing their roles on "Big Mouth" and "Central Park," respectively and Fox confirmed "The Simpsons" would no longer have white actors voicing non-white characters); issues with social media activism; the publishing industry's pursuit of diverse representation; flaws she noticed in the system while attending law school; and the pitfalls of nationalism. 'The Memory Librarian': Janelle Monáe tackles technology and queerness in Afrofuturistic new book In the essay "Tiny White People," Isen tackles the "little white man" that "climbs up your back and breathes down your neck and farts in your ear" – the voice inside individuals from marginalized groups that feeds imposter syndrome and looks for validation from white audiences. Related: Why some people passionately hate celebrities like James Corden, Anne Hathaway Isen's title essay feels most relevant to the current state of pop culture and celebrity and encapsulates the heart of her collection's message. In it white fragility and how it's "enviably good" at "metabolizing critique and converting it into a moral More: Lana Del Rey insists she's 'definitely not racist' after Instagram post singles out Beyoncé, others full stop," Isen writes of Swift's reasoning for breaking her years-long non-political stance in the 2020 documentary of her life In 2018, Swift made a rare political statement on social media during midterm elections endorsing the Tennessee Democratic candidate for Senate and condemning Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn's anti-LGBTQ values. "I need to be on the right side of history," Swift says in the doc. Of the "queen of relatability," whose empire stood on the motto "Be Kind," Isen writes DeGeneres' fall from grace was a rude awakening. When reports surfaced that she was leading a toxic work environment the talk show host called the allegations "misogynistic." Her "deeply cynical" response was seen for what it was Isen writes. DeGeneres' "reply frames the critiques of her workplace as a personal attack — one that involves at least tangentially the way she's been discriminated against in the past While the allegations were about abuses of power her response emphasized her powerlessness." Del Rey insisted she was "definitely not racist" after claiming Black performers like Beyoncé, Cardi B, Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj get a free pass for "songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes …" because how could she possibly be racist when "(her) best friends are rappers"? But as the public increasingly grows weary of celebrity culture we've also learned to not fall for the antics when white women try to weaponize their tears to prove how they've been wronged they become the subjects of grainy cell phone videos alliterative viral nicknames that testify to their sin," Isen writes. Isen covers loaded topics in a light-hearted way that breaks down the history of how society has gotten to a point where empty words have taken the place of "doing the work." She provides personal anecdotes and experiences reminding the reader of the subtle ways we too can be at fault for doing a whole lot of preaching, but not putting it into practice for change. Britney Spears confirms she's writing a memoir: 'It's actually healing and therapeutic' This is Black Mountain Institute Conversations a series of interviews produced by Nevada Public Radio’s Desert Companion in collaboration with the Black Mountain Institute Desert Companion Editor Heidi Kyser talks with BMI’s Shearing Fellows about their passions and author of the 2022 book Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service Each of the nine essays focuses on an aspect of contemporary culture analyzing it through Tajja’s own lived experience and extensive research and even funny ways people pay lip service to social justice without making meaningful changes to oppressive systems and structures About a year after my essay collection, Some of My Best Friends please: a new subtitle.” I’d known that this was coming When we started kicking around ideas for the paperback my team saw an opportunity to jazz things up The hardback versions were beloved—by more than just me I was reassured!—but it turns out that the original subtitle had begun to strike people as a little too subtle “We want something that isn’t so vague,” my editor wrote “and that very clearly tells you what you’re going to get in this collection: smart incisive opinions; a perspective that may shift your own; some humor!” I love challenges like this; when you have to find the perfect way to sell a story to make it land with an audience I also believe any exercise that asks you to compress your book into some sort of elevator pitch is never a wasted one Even if a tiny part of me was miffed to discover I hadn’t gotten it right the first time lazy proliferation of social-justice language—how it’s funny when institutions slap it on like lipstick how I’ve encountered that tendency in various industries I’ve worked in and what that pattern tells us about what it means to be alive right now I knew there was a high risk of being misread If there was even the smallest chance the previous subtitle heightened that risk they would spark something even better from someone else and we’d keep one-upping until we struck gold: On the Limits of Good Intentions accumulating dozens of suggestions and incorporating the feedback of a widening gyre of stakeholders Every time I thought we might be getting close a steady whack-a-mole of fears that we might do something—or had already done something—to turn off a reader There were more doubts brewing about the original subtitle than I’d realized Lip service wasn’t just “vague,” it was also “academic.” In fact It was “hand-wringy.” It gave people “bad vibes.” It wasn’t punchy what if we just changed the title altogether As someone for whom the word essays is a huge incentive to pick up a book at all who could slap the e-word on their book and be read as an enigmatic genius rather than a difficult scold I knew this was just 20/20 hindsight colliding with the brutal logic of marketing But this was a bit like finding out I’d been walking around in public with something smeared on my face and nobody told me until a year later Worse, I’d been walking around with the thing smeared on my face and thinking that it made me look cool. With Essays on Lip Service, I thought I was invoking an established tradition of nonfiction subtitles that signaled rigor and style. A way to assure the reader they were in for a good, smart time. It’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem: Essays Not Slouching Toward Bethlehem: And Other Clever Thoughts I’ve Had While Being a Caustic White Lady Were Didion to publish her debut collection today maybe that’s what it would have been called; the intellectual open-endedness implied by Essays or even A Memoir doesn’t really seem to fly anymore nonfiction subtitles have started trending more toward explicit description They have become an informal barometer of market pressure; a microcosm for questions of commerce It’s a truism that essay collections and memoirs by the non-famous are hard to break out subtitles have become a mini-sales pitch that obscures a book’s genre the way you might sneak a dog’s pills into a spoon of peanut butter plenty of contemporary writers still get to subtitle their books essays or a memoir or even a memoir in essays But an informal taxonomy suggests that numerous other patterns have sprung up in at least implied response to this market toughness Because this is a very informal and vibes-based theory—this is an essay about the publishing industry after all—it’s impossible to mark a fixed turning point and not in a way that gives me bad vibes or makes me wring my hands but in a mood of genuine curiosity that propels me toward picking up a book You get a taste of the case the book is going to make and the tone in which the writer’s going to make it It’s like an actor annotating a script and asking what does this character want and having that guiding intention accompany you through the text I couldn’t find anything made of a comparable material that didn’t make me break out in hives What was I going do: Some of My Best Friends: A Microaggression this is actually very close to one that somebody suggested.) I had tried to write a smart book about a subject that attracts a lot of dumb discourse as the weeks wore on and we got no closer to finding a subtitle that seemed workable All these choices offer different ways of addressing a very specific challenge: that of trying to capture a reader’s attention and stand out among the competition The subtitle in particular feels like it embodies a critical choice that an artist has to make: How much are you willing to compromise in the name of the market When it comes to what you’re willing to do to cut through the noise the calculus—between your vision for the project and what you’re comfortable doing to sell it—is different for every person where an editor can slap a click-baity headline on an essay and you don’t find out until you start getting harassed for it The reason I agonized so much over the new subtitle was because I felt pulled between those two imperatives: the vision versus the sell The message I was getting about the original subtitle was that we had weighted things too far in the first direction I thought I’d figured out where my own personal lines of compromise lay I was struggling to do so, having drinks at my friend Matt Ortile’s house, when he threw me a lifeline: “What about And Other White Lies?” Matt had gone in a similar direction for his own collection, The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I’ve Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance “White lies” made me sit up and put my wineglass down It was smart and sharp and it made me just uneasy enough that I knew marketing would love it There’s a certain anthropological prurience to these subtitles; the promise of a first-person voice to guide the reader through the experience of inhabiting a given subject position It’s a note about which I still feel some lingering ambivalence Putting it on the book nudged at the limits of my comfort but it didn’t feel like I was ceding ground on the integrity of the project Some of My Best Friends: And Other White Lies I’ve Been Told by Tajja Isen is now available in paperback from Atria/One Signal Publishers Featured image by Marco Verch is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Welcome to Secrets of the Book Critics in which books journalists from around the US and beyond share their thoughts on beloved classics and the changing nature of literary criticism in the age of social media bringing you behind the curtain of publications both national and regional This week we spoke to Toronto-based writer Book Marks: What classic book would you love to have reviewed when it was first published but I wonder how much of that love comes from hindsight; because I approached it expecting to have a moment synthesized for me It would have been interesting to come to the book free of all that noise—apart from the critical love it received at the time of its publication as well as the politics of fall 2001—and chart my consequent response Would it have rung a different note of truth Would any ensuing essay of mine take the angle of “this is how we live now” (I certainly hope not; that just sounds like dull criticism) I think we have plenty of writers working today whose books make a solid case for talking back to that tweet But even if the attempt to start that conversation backfires miserably I always appreciate when someone brings it up because it’s worth remembering that pulling off that kind of cultural analysis in fiction is hard BM: What unheralded book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to TI: I thought Colin Winnette’s The Job of the Wasp (Soft Skull Press) was pretty delicious It’s a gothic murder mystery—and possibly a ghost story—set in a boarding school for boys of vague It plays up (and plays with) the claustrophobic and authoritarian terror of the boarding experience which always strikes me—a public-school kid with a tendency to romanticize that world Rowling—as a particularly scandalous kind of voyeurism I was ready for creepy but still surprised by the body count perfectly-contained literary ecosystem in just over 200 pages I wanted to throw it across the room when I’d finished BM: What is the greatest misconception about book critics and criticism TI: I think the greatest misconception—greatest in the sense of importance if not prevalence—is one that’s worse when it’s held by critics themselves: that generosity is optional depending on how much you like the book It’s still useful to bring a degree of care to the things you eviscerate Look in its eyes as you’re watching it die you’re not going to love everything you review—there are many many awful books in the world—and the schadenfreude of a Renata Adler-style takedown is always satisfying but I bristle when it’s so clearly someone’s critical kink to write about stuff that they hate Not everyone approaches a review as a single-vote referendum on whether or not to pick up the book who chiefly come to criticism to texture their experience of a book they’ve already read straight-up complaint is uncommunicative and navel-gazing BM: How has book criticism changed in the age of social media TI: I’ll echo other critics in this series who’ve answered this question: my work in book criticism post-dates the rise of social media But one shift that I’ve seen even since I’ve started reviewing and one that I think has been pretty positive is the turn away from the single-book review and toward more argument-driven or trend-driven essays I suppose I’m more a fan of the former than the latter—trend pieces can too easily calcify into “here is a thing that two or three books have in common” and offer little beyond registering that commonality—but given the speed at which culture this impulse toward drawing connections feels like a more interesting responsible way to think and talk about our ways of reading BM: What critic working today do you most enjoy reading but here are some of the contemporary critics whose work I most enjoy (and to whom I owe a debt for helping me become a keener more astute observer of worlds and texts): Gabrielle Bellot; Alexander Chee; Michelle Dean; Lauren M Jackson; Lili Loofbourow; Soraya Roberts; Mari Ruti; Doreen St Félix; Philip Sayers; Christina Sharpe; Zadie Smith; Tony Tulathimutte Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Longreads She is a contributing editor for Catapult and an Editorial Fellow at The Walrus magazine · Previous entries in this series · A massive iceberg broke off Antarctica as I began to write this News sources reported it was somewhere between three to eighty times larger than Manhattan At any scale such an event is beyond comprehension but it’s more difficult to grasp that the environmental catastrophes we’re seeing around the world—among them the rapid extinctions of species and rampant wildfires—may seem minor compared with what’s to come the nineteen contributors to The World as We Knew It focus on more intimate and immediate signs of climate change those that are apparent to families and individuals worldwide By illuminating “the connections between the personal and the planetary,” the anthology’s resonant and introspective essays grieve what we’ve already lost As co-editors Amy Brady and Tajja Isen write in the book’s introduction “We are among the first—and perhaps one of the last—human populations to have memories of what life was like before.” It’s easier to adapt to man-made climate change than it is to meaningfully change our behavior The writer Gabrielle Bellot describes how red lionfish “if not an era where our telescopes are sharper than ever but we choose not to see?” Meera Subramanian reflects on how she used to sleep beneath the stars while living in a commune in the Oregon woods but now she douses her clothes with insecticide before venturing outside due to the disease-spreading ticks proliferating in the warming climate We’ve worried about climate collapse for so long that it’s warranted its own genre, but what makes this anthology so alarming is that the alarms have been accepted as part of our daily lives. We may understand the urgency to act, but, even as we advocate for environmental regulations and compost our food scraps, our very existence makes us complicit in the problem. As Melissa Febos puts it “Most of us think of ourselves as good people but sometimes I trip on the fact that I am a menace to all earthly life.” I worry my child will inherit a grim landscape I compulsively check the elevation of my home against projected sea-level rise grateful we’re safe from one looming disaster Similar parenting dilemmas recur throughout the anthology Terese Svoboda takes an urban survival course with her adult sons and urges them to befriend ten-year-olds “who will be stronger than they are in fifteen years.” And Nickolas Butler wonders if screening Mad Max for his children will prepare them for the apocalyptic future As much as The World as We Knew It documents climate change on the personal level it also explores what it may be like to accept the consequences of our actions—and our costly inaction Omar El Akkad says the “great undoing that is climate change” imperils our future as much as our past The landmarks of El Akkad’s childhood in Qatar have disappeared in the wreckage of oil extraction and the skyscrapers that followed El Akkad is still leery of the view that “the only acceptable ordering of the Earth is some previous ordering of the Earth.” As divisions between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us deepen conflicts over resources will become more desperate El Akkad proposes that artists and storytellers can help us make sense of history and reimagine our future—and Benjamin Samuel is the Managing Editor of BOMB Magazine Carol Isen has been acting director of the Department of Human Resources since October Acting Director Carol Isen would be first openly LGBT individual to serve in the role if confirmed Mayor London Breed nominated Carol Isen Tuesday to serve as The City’s Human Resources director a group representing Black city employees has come out against Isen who has served as acting director since October and is asking the Board of Supervisors to oppose her appointment The Board is required to confirm Isen’s appointment to lead the department which provides human resource services to about 60 city departments with a workforce of more than 38,000 employees “I’m confident that Carol is the right person to lead the department and that she will make sure our employees are supported and that we maintain a workforce that is diverse and inclusive,” Breed said in a statement Board President Shamann Walton introduced a resolution last year calling for oversight into the EEO complaints which said that “the Black Employee Alliance and Coalition Against Anti-Blackness have raised these concerns of a poorly ran Department of Human Resources for years.” Breed and Isen announced The City’s workplace policies and practices related to claims of bias discrimination and retaliation would undergo an independent review by William Gould Isen promised in a statement to “take the bold action necessary to grow our relationships with the community expand our partnerships with departments and to ensure improved culture consistency and excellence in human resources for all city employees.” In a letter sent to Breed and members of the Board of Supervisors Tuesday afternoon the Black Employees Association and Coalition Against Anti-Blackness said it had been contacted by more than 30 of its members with concerns in the time since the appointment was announced San Francisco is hosting everything from lucha libre matches to day parties A jewelry store left the ailing mall recently and two more stores will soon as the mall’s roster of retailers dwindles At the cocktail lounge above Michelin-starred Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown the menu cycles through drinks based on the lunar planting calendar “We feel it important to convey to you that the appointment of Carol Isen as the permanent director of human resources is one that we do not agree with,” the group wrote noting that it had previously expressed those concerns in a letter to the Civil Service Commission The group said it hoped for a leader with “experience beyond the public sector context and someone with life experience from a diverse demographic background with proven experience of solving inequitable workforce issues.” “This decision does not reinforce hope or restore broken trust of Black employees who have continued to labor for change,” the group wrote “We do not foresee or anticipate any meaningful changes or differences in leadership under Director Isen’s leadership Isen would be the first openly LGBT individual to serve in the role She previously served as Chief Labor Relations Director for San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Her nomination drew support from the San Francisco Labor Council’s interim executive director Kim Tavaglione Isen on one of our top priorities — reforming EEO policies and processes to better serve employees,” Tavaglione said in a statement “City workers deserve fair and transparent leadership at the head of this important agency jsabatini@sfexaminer.com Editor’s Note: This story was updated with additional 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You can unsubscribe at any time For The Wild preserves Earth's natural communities through land conservation Register: Earthly Reads Book Study \u2192 We use cookies to track visits to our website and to help our website run effectively Handcut collage with mother bear and two cubs trailing her through an abstract landscape; a female face gazes downward beneath the hollow of a tree inhabited by an owl; by Carmen Loretta, www.pacificspiritbear.com “If this new green economy continues to perpetuate the same ethos that resource extraction has we will not find any solutions and we will see our suffering perpetuated.” Heeding this call from Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller we explore the fruitful spaces between radical imagination and on-the-ground activism as we think about what it means to take meaningful steps towards creating a non-extractive future Ruth shares how tending to the future must center Indigenous values and lifeways we look at the totality of what a “just transition” can offer us beyond limited definitions shaped by economics Ruth shares the ways in which a just transition can be understood as a cyclical movement inspired by kinship Ruth and Ayana consider where a politics of love can breathe and the steps we can take to create systems of wellness In recognition of what might feel like a painful transition for many Ruth guides us to think about what practices and acts of care we can implement with each other as a way of willing a more beautiful world back into existence. “The Serviceberry” by Robin Wall Kimmerer Alaska's Just Transition Collective – Kohtr'elneyh Native Movement All About Love by bell hooks Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown Native Renewables Alaska Native Renewable Industries Green New Deal Network Thrive Agenda “A Material Transition” by War On Want “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck & K On The Land Podcast hosted by Deenaalee Chase-Hodgdon Land Acknowledgement Workshop by Melissa Shaginoff "We The People" TEDXTalk by MIchael Charles Learn whose traditional homelands you are on Self-assess and reflect using decolonization tools and education materials to grow into better allyship with Indigenous communities and communities of color Learn how best to take care of yourself and those around you – mentally Native Movement Action Resources Defend the Sacred Action Toolkit For The Wild is a slow media organization dedicated to land-based protection We are rooted in a paradigm shift away from human supremacy As we dream towards a world of grounded justice and reciprocity our work highlights impactful stories and deeply-felt meaning making as balms for these times All Rights Reserved © document.write(new Date().getFullYear()) For The Wild™ This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page 2023 at 1:05 pm ET.css-79elbk{position:relative;}Lawrence Isen was sentenced to five years in prison in connection with a stock pump and dump scheme the United States Department of Justice announced Isen collaborated with a Melville boiler room NY — A former registered broker who conspired to promote and manipulate the price of shares in publicly traded companies was sentenced to five years in prison conspired with a boiler room operation based in Melville to cost elderly investors millions of dollars Isen was charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud He was also ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution and more than $700,000 in forfeiture Isen and Jeffrey Chartier, his partner, were convicted in March 2020 after a six-week trial. Chartier, 59, of Sunny Isles, Florida, was sentenced in December 2022 “Lawrence Isen and his co-conspirators used their skills to steal precious savings from elderly hard-working people all over the country,” stated United States Attorney Breon Peace "[The] sentence should serve as yet another reminder to fraudsters who prey on the vulnerable that this Office will hold them accountable for the damage they cause to the security and well-being of so many.” Chartier and others working with the Melville boiler room artificially inflated the price and trading volume of stock in struggling companies with poor prospects and off-loaded it onto unsuspecting victims who were often elderly and vulnerable to dump many shares in Hydrocarb Energy Corp and Intelligent Content Enterprises on the victims The companies traded under the ticker symbols HECC and ICEIF Isen was barred from acting as a broker by FINRA in 1996 and convicted of wire fraud conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the Southern District of New York in 2000 major HECC shareholder Michael Watts and major ICEIF shareholders in India Isen connected the investors with the boiler room negotiating the terms of the arrangements between them and managed the relationships between them Isen helped the boiler room in its illegal cold call campaigns that used lies and high-pressure sales tactics to lure people by transferring money and stock required by the boiler room for the campaigns; working with the boiler room to fill the tricked victims’ orders with Isen’s crooked investors’ stock; and creating fraudulent stock purchase agreements consulting agreements and invoices to cover up the illegal conduct The conspiracy's market manipulation fraudulently inflated the stock price of HECC ICIEF and three other companies by more than $147 million All 16 defendants charged in the case were convicted Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts. Ron Fanfair is a freelance writer/photographer whose work has appeared principally in Share Canada\u2019s largest weekly ethnic newspaper Nissae Isen’s husky voice caught the attention of a studio director Invited to audition for a voice-over role in Miss BG a 3-D animated series based on the ‘Gudule’ French children’s book series didn’t get to play the role she was expecting Isen has been cast as a male character in most of the roles she has played because of her voice “I am comfortable now with doing that,” said 20-year-old Westmount Collegiate Institute graduate and second-year nursing student at Ryerson University She plays the lead voice – Kody -- in ‘Kody Kapow’ which is an animated series about a Chinese-American boy who discovers that he’s destined to become a martial arts superhero Kody goes on adventures to save his village using martial arts tenets such as mindfulness patience and perseverance with the help of his cousin Mei and their friend Goji played by American actor Jason Alexander who is best known for his prominent role as George Costanza in the television series ‘Seinfeld’ The 26-episode series premiered on July 15 “I sent in a tape and then I had to go to a downtown studio,” she said “I was then told they were looking for someone fitting a Chinese-American character but they changed their minds and I was called back and presented with the role In several television series in the last few years Isen has voiced prominent young male characters including Yuri in ‘My Big Big Friend’ for which she received a 2012 and 2013 Young Artist Awards nominations for ‘Best Performance in a Voice-Over Role’ At last February’s Alliance of Canadian Cinema Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) Awards “That was a new experience for me,” said the 2014 nominee in the Outstanding Performance-Voice category Isen said voice acting has helped her move out of a comfort zone “I had a lot of stuffed animals which I took to the studio and that helped to settle me down and make me comfortable.” Isen is following in the footsteps of older sister Tajja Isen who played the role of Young Nala in the Toronto production of Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ she was part of a group that won a Gemini Award in the ‘Best Individual or Ensemble Performance in an Animated Program or Series’ category for their presentation in ‘Atomic Betty’ “That was one of two shows that we worked on together and I remember we were just giggling and we stood across from each other in the studio,” recalled Isen who has also done voice-over commercials for the York Region District School Board Gain Laundry Detergent and Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats The eldest of five siblings is also a singer/songwriter and a University of Toronto Faculty of Law student and Master of Arts candidate “They have forged great part-time careers,” said their father Dr Jordie Isen who has been involved in several charitable projects for the Caribbean “They are both at the top in a hub of voice acting in Toronto and they have established great relationships They are very similar and independent in that way.” Isen is married to Trinidadian-born Karen Isen whose father Ken Simon is a retired Humber College business school lecturer was a Toronto Symphony Orchestra trumpeter in the 1950s and their grandfather Sign up to stay informed on the latest news updates Sponsored link Huge error comes to light at hearing as City Hall prepares to give the department and the POA another blank check without much oversight where the General Fund is around $6 billion a year It’s almost twice the entire budget of the Public Defender’s Office which is being asked to take a 7.5 percent cut potentially mean the layoff of 17 trial lawyers It’s about the same as the full annual budget for the District Attorney’s Office It’s more than enough to reduce all the cuts at City College It’s enough to build supportive housing for at least 130 people who are now homeless It’s also the difference between what the Mayor’s Office said a new three-year contract with the Police Officers Association would cost The hearing of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee Thursday/6 was pretty astonishing: The director of the Department of Human Resources told the committee that the total cost of the new MOU which includes raises and retention bonuses That’s what she and the Mayor’s Office also told Sup Preston told me he had read the MOU before the hearing and that wasn’t the number he was seeing; in fact Isen told the panel that this was just “a semantic difference,” and that in fact the total cumulative price to the city was $84 million “That’s just wrong,” Preston said he explained that his boss was in error: The city would pay out an additional $84.7 million in year three—and $25.7 million in year one “That’s a big deal,” Preston said And other than the Examiner, which reported on the hearing and cited “confusion over costs,” nobody is making much of a fuss about this Imagine what would happen if one of the progressives proposed an $84 million plan for housing the homeless or tenant protections—and then suddenly said at a hearing that gee The mayor would talk about how the progressives lack fiscal responsibility The whole incident would become the stuff of attack mailers next year Breed and Isen (and others) have been arguing that that we have to throw a lot more money at the cops to improve retention; too many officers are leaving for other jurisdictions or taking retirement the moment they are eligible Fair enough: Giving workers a raise or a bonus is often a good way to keep them from leaving their jobs And some of the other jurisdictions in the Bay Area pay their cops a bit more than San Francisco does But pay might not be the only reasons cops are leaving the San Francisco force or getting out of law-enforcement entirely And higher wages might not be the only thing that would help with retention nobody knows for sure: Isen said the city went into negotiations with the POA lacking any data from exit interviews (a standard procedure at many operations) that would indicate what was causing cops to leave and what might keep them here “It’s inconceivable to me that we don’t have that data,” Preston said at the hearing Never mind: The committee members voted to move the MOU forward anyway It’s a blank check for the Police Department and the POA. And while the tech bros, with the help of the local news media, sensationalize a tragic killing of a rich white guy and create the perception that we need more cops San Francisco’s street situation seems to bewilder many: The city is awash in visible homelessness but the drugs are now more dangerous and those who are suffering are more visible Property crime rates are high: There is great wealth in this city and great wealth disparities and people steal things San Francisco’s crime statistics reveal that it is safer than most other mid-to-large-sized cities including those cited by the VC class as places to relocate to escape San Francisco’s crime problem Year-by-year crime statistics also reveal that however safe San Franciscans may or may not be — they’ve rarely been safer The media-driven politics in San Francisco has created a situation where any reasonable oversight of the Police Department is tossed away At what point would city officials say: Enough 48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center We are community supported journalism. Become a member. but we need you to help us beat the billionaires and fight for the soul of San Francisco by becoming a member or donating today everyone wears funeral smiles — gray grins The courtroom falls silent when Nathan Isen walks in including Ralph Yaffe of Boyds and Scott Isdaner awkward because no one knows if this is hello or goodbye The third-generation descendant of a prominent Main Line family the well-to-do and the purely aspirational to be sentenced on a money-laundering charge “I didn’t think I was gonna make it,” says Isen Massive.” His voice is a loud stage whisper as if Isen is always suffering massive chest pains Isen (friends call him “Nicky”) is of average height He carries extra weight that gives him a kind of mountainous shape shifting his weight from one foot to the other his white socks flashing against his black pants and shoes as he faces a potential 20-year prison sentence But patrons of his gallery describe him as confident bold enough to ask attractive female customers to turn for him Isen has ended up in court on this day in April 2015 because of his relationship with Ronald Belciano a Main Line weed dealer who was sentenced to federal prison to anyone concerned with the criminal justice system as though Isen isn’t exactly a danger to society And so the questions mount — about who Nicky Isen is how he came to serve as collateral damage in a pot bust I first learned about Nicky Isen almost by a kind of osmosis Brewster & Company Gallery at a few separate locations around Center City — on Sansom Street If you’ve walked around downtown at all in the past 30-odd years to complain that artwork Isen authenticated was fake called in January 2013 to tell me he’d attended an auction run by Dominic Briscoe and Isen’s son who billed the event as his grandmother’s estate sale “They said it was ‘blue-chip art,’” Aloia told me Aloia bid on and won prints by some big-name artists — Miró Aloia spent a bit less than $10,000 that day a meaningful entry point for someone without a fortune to spend “William Isen actually kept berating us,” Aloia said “insulting the audience by saying the prices we bid were too low.” He wanted to come back with blankets and twine to protect his purchases for the drive from the Main Line to East Falls But he says Isen’s son and the other people working the auction were pushy insisting he pay and take the art immediately “They wouldn’t hold it or store it,” Aloia told me The art had been authenticated by Nathan Isen Each frame bore a card listing the particulars of the work This offered some small assurance to Aloia The stuff was “authenticated” — someone had verified that it was real either an original work or an official reproduction “something seemed off” about his purchases looking online for information about Briscoe and Nathan Isen and quickly found that others had raised questions about both men he fired off emails asking for his money back Isen wrote: “The owner’s grandson was on the premises to help out if he could,” not identifying William as his own son or “the owner” as his mother (Briscoe and William Isen did not return calls seeking their comment for this story.) I discovered that a lot of eyes were on Isen A member of the local art community told me some sort of investigation was under way and a pair of sources in federal law enforcement told me Isen was being probed for money laundering and for possible art crimes I slowly discovered what the feds also found: There is no art crime to hang on Nathan Isen But his troubles demonstrate that even a concept so simple as innocence can be deeply complicated — a hall of mirrors run by a man who can make us see what he wants us to FINDING THE LIKES OF ISEN in a story like this one is a shock a union of two particularly prominent families Nathan Isen (his grandfather) and Alan (his father) were best known for running Paramount Packaging a manufacturing company that sold packaging products was a Robinson — a deep and wide clan of businesspeople who owned cemeteries The social significance of the pairing triggered spasms of excitement in their community and the exclusive Green Valley Country Club very warm and wonderful people,” remembers Gil Goldstein a friend who has now retired to Palm Beach The Isens had three children — daughter Nancy and two sons Peter Isen led one of the family paper companies Nicky graduated from Wharton and enjoys a reputation as Wharton-smart He pursued a love for art and opened his gallery and live in Villanova with a menagerie of big dogs and squawking birds Factions of the Isen family continue to grow the empire Nicky’s uncle Harold divorced his wife Reva Their daughter is billionaire fashion designer Tory Burch now serves as chief legal officer and president of corporate development for Burch sitting on one of the great treasure heaps in modern American commerce his attorney portrayed him as a tad desperate — operating a family business that his four sons aren’t prepared to run without him “This sounds,” says one real estate executive who grew up on the Main Line and doesn’t want his name to be used for fear of the social implications “like a ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves’ story.” The old saying captures how the momentum of a wealthy clan diminishes in the span of a few generations the Isen brothers wound up embroiled in a lawsuit Peter sued Nicky when he slipped and fell in his brother’s kitchen at a family bar mitzvah celebration ran on for seven years before they settled The depositions capture Isen at his most eccentric very poor memory unfortunately,” Nicky stated “Literally metal soles?” asked one of the attorneys “You don’t have any particular recollection of falling at the party The whole thing reads as an attempt to portray himself as the truly sympathetic brother “WHAT ARE YOU BUYING when you’re buying art?” when one of his supporters asks me this question “I’m not surprised Nicky ended up in a situation like this,” he continues It’s the world he’s operated in all his life Those words cut to the heart of the case: The feds sent an undercover agent into Isen’s art gallery might have just been looking to make a sale The other issue Isen’s supporter raises proves more perplexing: We hold art in such high esteem And the list of ways he adds a little flair to his business and biography is long a sign at his gallery near 21st and Race advertised a MOVING SALE His gallery at Walnut Street long ago offered a similar pitch “There were years,” says attorney Thomas Marrone “that I laughed every time I walked by because there was always a ‘Going Out of Business’ sign in the window.” Isen’s chief credential is his co-author credit for Louis Icart: The Complete Etchings famous for sketches that capture Paris and New York in the 1920s and ’30s who contextualized Isen’s contribution: “He is the third listed author yet customers in his gallery marvel at how he remembers just where every print is in his cluttered shop I called him repeatedly to set up an interview “I’m dying of leukemia and my wife is dying of emphysema,” he told me “We just want to enjoy the months we have left.” he requested: “Could you not call here in the morning again My wife is dying and can’t get out of bed before 1 p.m.” he told me that if I called him after June 8th He refused to reveal the date’s significance a pattern had emerged: His gallery will probably move one day Isen and his wife looked lively in court — his wife is brassy vigorous and forthright — but they are dying and I couldn’t help but believe that this practice of telling truths with artful craft extends to his work OTHER GALLERY OWNERS in the city respond to Nathan Isen’s name mostly with eye rolls and smirks an occasional compliment for his “showmanship” but no tears for their colleague the eminent sixth-generation leader of Freeman’s Auction The vitriol stems from the way Isen flouts industry conventions Isen has worked with auctioneer Dominic Briscoe according to the Bergen County Record in 2012 once held a series of auctions billed as containing art from disgraced financier Bernie Madoff and his victims Briscoe has been cited in numerous states for deceptive practices Isen authenticated much of the work at the Madoff auctions; one of those auctions was listed on a bill of sale as “being conducted on behalf of I Isen said he often sends work to Briscoe because it’s the easiest way to make a sale and claimed to authenticate “a couple hundred” pieces of art per week a high figure in a time-consuming field that requires expertise in particular artists and the craft of printmaking Isen’s authentications were also used at a similar Madoff-related auction conducted by brothers Anwar and Azam Khan who have been cited in multiple states for improper auctioneering yet Isen’s work spans a dizzying array of artists He also focuses on prints rather than originals — a legitimate market but one that deals in multiple copies of any given work and thus allows more room for confusion I took the pieces Aloia bought to be judged by an independent eye: Jeffrey Fuller an art appraiser in Mount Airy and a member of the American Society of Appraisers thin and gentlemanly man in a spiffy bow tie took several weeks to produce a 30-page summation He concluded that a purported sketch by Picasso was actually an image removed from a book photocopied or perhaps scanned and printed The two Degas pieces had similar issues: Étude de Tête/Atelier de L’Artiste seems to have been reproduced from a book page; Chevaux de Courses was likely “removed from a book and mounted to a new sheet of paper.” The Botero is also a reproduction of a page from a book a reproduction of a work that has itself been deemed “most likely” a forgery by an independent organization that tracks fake Dalís Fuller writes it is “most probable” that the Miró pieces Aloia purchased — all three — were removed from a book of Miró’s works Fuller pegs the combined value of all nine prints at $2,390 but a close look reveals Isen’s authentications are accurate He cites the Mirós as “from the rare limited edition of 1,500” — a number too big for a run of prints with any real value Isen told Aloia what these works were — without exactly saying so Isen described the Degas Étude as an “offset lithograph from an original drawing by Degas.” The language “offset lithograph” means that it wasn’t printed from the plates associated with a high-quality reproduction albeit elliptically: This is a copy from the work that actually held real value Excited that famous art could be his to hang on the wall “I think you’ve hit the real crux of it,” says Holland one of Isen’s co-authors on the Icart book and people would find the information more useful But there is nothing dishonest in what he’s doing Whether it’s the art world or in politics or whatever you might be selling you want to put your product in the best light.” Isen’s practices are an open secret in local art circles Gallery owners told me they’d heard complaints about Isen as Carl David from the David David Gallery off Rittenhouse Square put it “in the wind.” In one of Center City’s most beautiful framing shops the proprietress told me she often gets customers who want to put images authenticated by Isen into frames more expensive than the art itself and at first I regarded this cynically — after all But David advised me: She doesn’t want to risk a lawsuit for disparaging someone else’s goods I ran across numerous secondhand stories of people who felt wronged by Isen a high-ranking executive in a Philadelphia entertainment company told me how she and her husband spent hundreds of dollars on a print from Isen that she later called “the sort of poster you’d pay $25 for in a museum gift shop.” The woman suggested people didn’t want to talk for the same reason she wanted her name left out of this article: “They’re embarrassed to admit they were taken,” she says getting fooled isn’t good for your reputation The old saying is ‘Buyer beware,’ and I think that’s right.” my admiration for Aloia’s openness only increased But I also started to think of his honesty as a kind of luxury an East Falls resident could more readily afford As another highly successful real estate executive told me sources might stay mum to protect their own reputations — and for reasons more tribal: “Nicky’s a Main Liner,” he said and everybody wants to keep up appearances.” it seems Isen has been known to federal law enforcement for a long time One gallery owner claims to have been enlisted by the FBI as a consultant to look at work a wealthy man with homes on the Main Line and at the Shore had bought from Isen The man paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for what he thought of as investments “I’d say 30 or 40 percent of it wasn’t right,” says the gallery owner “Some were essentially exhibition posters.” The man ultimately complained to Isen a retired FBI agent who specialized in art crime and still works as a consultant won’t confirm or deny any investigation never made public But he agreed to look at Aloia’s purchases and explained that he’d been “aware of” Isen for maybe 20 years Wittman says Isen held “estate auctions” at big mansions listed for sale “People figured the art was owned by the same person who owned the mansion,” says the ex-agent “But Nicky had just relocated the inventory from his store and someone who has authenticated a painting can just say that’s what I thought it was.’ How are you going to prove they knew otherwise?” Perhaps most fundamentally art is of dubious worth in the first place “Art holds no intrinsic value,” Wittman says “A hammer holds more intrinsic value than a painting because its value isn’t based purely on perception.” art reflects free-market capitalism at its most pure — art is worth whatever anyone that allows customers to return “most anything” they bought from him for art of the same price The policy works: He keeps the money and can take another run at selling the returned art says Isen “introduced me to a world I love but I’ve had things I’ve bought from him checked out — items I spent $12,000 Even Wittman seems to have developed a kind of appreciation for Isen When it came time to look at Aloia’s purchases peered at one of the prints Aloia won at auction He handed me the loupe and told me to look They might have printed it from a computer image With the loupe magnifying the image to 10 times its size I felt like I was looking through a microscope Nathan Isen should be contemplating retirement and enjoying his Main Line life without the encumbrance of a criminal charge Belciano grew up in a constant state of want He was just a toddler when his father died in mysterious circumstances She watched over her son as best she could through a series of apartment evictions at the Shore and later in Havertown a football signed by every Philadelphia Eagle — he lost behind padlocks and eviction notices taped to doors Belciano scrambled for some sense of purpose and an interest in glassblowing landed him squarely in American weed culture moving a pound here or there while selling glass pipes and bongs By the late 2000s he was a full-time pot wholesaler growing his own high-end product on California farmland and selling it to dealers throughout the Northeast Corridor and locally He watched the 2005 Super Bowl between the Eagles and Patriots aware that players on both sides of the ball were smoking his weed Belciano met Isen through friends when the pot dealer was looking for a house which accomplished three goals: He learned about art He got to hang beautiful pictures on his walls And the money he couldn’t stick into a bank account was freshly laundered a side benefit he never discussed with Isen Belciano might have paid more than the art was worth — he says he spent $1 million on work the feds later pegged at $635,000 And he did get one “bad” Picasso from Isen He paid $15,500 but didn’t like its looks when he got home Belciano asked Isen for an authentication from the artist’s estate Isen came back and declared the piece “no good,” a fake Isen said he’d refund Belciano’s money after he pried repayment from the guy who originally sold it to him Belciano claims he never did get that money back Belciano has been sentenced to five years in jail for selling pot But he could choose to feel bitter about a lot of things: For starters the feds confiscated $5 million in assets from him including $2.4 million discovered hidden in a fish tank in his Villanova home It was one of the largest cash seizures in Philadelphia history — and as the country moves rapidly toward decriminalization it might go down as the last big pot bust in the United States he also told people exactly what he was selling them “I think Nicky screwed me on some things,” he told me in advance of Isen’s sentencing and I hope he walks away from this without doing any time at all.” They went gambling together in Atlantic City “We shared a lot of laughs,” says Belciano Belciano met with me twice before reporting to prison for his 63-month sentence and the heaviness of what awaited him brought him down Isen took one look at her and said: “Turn around for me the scheduled start time for her husband’s sentencing but she doesn’t look like she dragged herself here The feds didn’t charge Isen with laundering money for him and while they declined to comment on the subject there could be numerous reasons for this: The statute of limitations for money laundering runs for five years Belciano told me most of the artwork seized But he also told me he talked to Isen about art for art’s sake Belciano bought art only partly to launder money there was no money-laundering case to make at all They sent an undercover Homeland Security agent to Isen’s gallery with cash she identified as coming from her weed-dealing boyfriend from California She apologized that the bills reeked of weed because he stashed money and product in the same place or that he simply figured her boyfriend must be legit and in transcripts from the undercover buy Isen agreed not to give her any receipts or invoices He also advised her to say she bought the art at a thrift sale or received it from a relative the relatively small amount of money their agent spent But something about the setup still smells funny — of bitterness like the sort of operation cops launch when they get a hard-on for somebody Previous investigators had tried to find an art-related crime to stick on Isen a decade earlier during the Belciano investigation — and failed The immense effort itself raises questions: With weed decriminalized in 19 states and the District of Columbia do we really want law enforcement spending this kind of time and money trying to take down everyone involved was targeted and prosecuted less for any real crime and more for his shtick — for his history of dancing to the edge all the way up to the time he did business with Belciano a weed dealer who happened to have an interest in art Yaffe and Isdaner speak up for Isen’s character The judge has received 15 letters of support from people like Center City attorney Bob Mongeluzzi and a Florida hedge fund manager who typifies Isen as odd and a great Philadelphia “character” deserving of leniency Isen’s attorney submits data analysis demonstrating that half of all first-time money-laundering offenders receive probationary sentences He also has notes from Isen’s doctors — a gastroenterologist an orthopedist and more — along with a study from an expert who warns that the health care in a federal prison could turn even a short stay for a man in Isen’s condition into a death sentence Isen avails himself of his opportunity to speak to the court: “Now I know what’s important is doing the right thing.” The judge issues a soft sentence — three years’ probation and a fine of $25,000 where supporters shake his hand and offer congratulations but he keeps putting off a meeting till June 8th funny art — a metal dog captured mid-bark; sculpted heads with flowers growing out of them a Ford Expedition and a Jag to reach Isen’s door the whole house erupts in woofs and shrill squawks of a pair of Great Danes with gleaming polka-dotted coats given how sick Isen and his wife are supposed to be three hours before Leslie Isen is supposed to get out of bed She wears a housecoat; her hair is tousled as if she did indeed just get up we’ve spoken on the phone and seen each other in court but she strikes me as the most vital-looking dying person I’ve ever seen “I’ve been trying to reach Nicky,” I tell her “There’s not going to be any interview,” she says suddenly seems right: a stain on a gallery owner and a Main Line man for whom appearance is everything Originally published in the August 2015 issue of Philadelphia magazine 30 Must-Visit Pennsylvania State Historical Markers Everything You Need to Know About the Eagles Super Bowl LIX Parade 19 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do at the Library Isen is the offspring of Hartley Cycles and Talbot Frameworks bespoke builders founded by Caren Hartley and Matthew McDonough respectively but back in 2015 the pair hatched a plan to start a small-batch bike brand together to cater for a wider audience It was out with custom geometry and custom tubesets, and in with off-the-peg and stock geometry sizes. Hence the small-batch bit.Related questions you can explore with Ask Cyclist, our AI search engine.If you would like to ask your own question you just need to , Register or subscribe Hartley and McDonough are able to build bikes in batches which for legal reasons is technically only ever known as the Road Ready Race but which I will henceforth refer to (as Isen does in-house) as the Isen R3 Just because sizes are standardised doesn’t mean the build kit is The seatmast topper is made in-house and fitted out with an Enve clamp system The Sram groupset is bejewelled with a THM Clavicula chainset replete with carbon rings and stopping them is a Cane Creek eeBrake at the front and a Shimano Dura-Ace 9110 under-BB brake at the rear The cranks alone are some of the priciest on the market (€1,149) full carbon and incredibly light at a claimed 302g without rings that front eeBrake weighs just 86g without pads It’s parts such as these that help keep this whole bike down at 7.8kg Maybe I’m making too much of the expensive parts and weight but there are two things you can’t escape when falling in love with a bike: looks and that initial feel a spangly multi-tone blue that shimmers near gold-like in certain light The TIG welding is so smooth it could have been brazed and then there’s the asymmetric shaping of the bi-lam seat tube lug the flourish of the bridge between the seatstays and bronze sculpted headbadge I didn’t meet a single person when I was testing the R3 who didn’t compliment its looks I have always had a soft spot for steel; it lends itself to a zingy ride feel because the narrower tubes tend to be more flexy than carbon In this ‘steel feel’ the R3 does not disappoint but it was the lightness of touch that impressed me most to begin with This feels like a deliciously feathery bike that’s rapid off the mark nimble through the bends and a dancer up climbs there is a lack of ‘pop’ compared to a stiff carbon bike a steel rear end that isn’t insanely overbuilt is apt to flex much more than carbon where chainstays can be twice the size as steel and for less weight But what steel can do is offer superb cornering abilities There’s one corner on my standard test route into which I can carry about 40kmh but which is surfaced like a construction site on the Moon palpably flexing and twisting with the road the overall effect was one of startling grip but there is just one thing the R3 and I cannot agree on – its rear brake. I don’t care what anyone says putting a rim brake under the bottom bracket is a bad idea The Black Inc Thirty wheels have a textured brake surface that zizz-es under braking and because of this it’s possible to hear brake rub Indeed I did when climbing hard or sprinting and it’s the same with every bike I’ve ever ridden with a brake under the BB so there’s barely any power lost to friction the brake rub only happens in extreme instances and the brake position here really appeals aesthetically But the other thing is underside BB brakes just don’t work very well They need to fit a smaller gap so have a compromised linkage system giving way to impoverished leverage and worsened modulation. I’ll be asking Isen if they can build me an R3 with the calliper in the regular position I find them comfortable enough to wear every day and I’m pleased to say these updated shoes are no different The shape suits my feet well – wide across the metatarsals with a high-ish instep courtesy of some decent insoles from Solestar wraparound tongue that does a fine job of distributing Boa dial tension and the overall feel is both light and supple the Isen All Season (£1,999 frameset) boasts disc brakes the Mountain G.O.A.T (£1,999 frameset) goes into full MTB territory It maintains Isen’s handbuilt steel aplomb with some clever engineering and sharp paintwork You must be logged in to post a comment To manage an existing Cyclist magazine subscription, please visit Manage your account or visit our subscription FAQ page. To subscribe, or for other enquiries, please contact us Sign up to the Cyclist newsletter to receive curated emails direct to your inbox Sign up to our newsletter Log in to access Cyclist Rides using your email pertaining to your subscription Don't forget a subscription to Cyclist includes: Log in to post comments and use Ask Cyclist our AI platform that answers your questions based on our articles Register to comment on our latest articles Occasional emails from selected third-party sponsors and advertisers Please enter your username or email address to reset your password We are living in a moment when our actions to live and work more sustainably will have a lasting impact.” This April marks the 52nd anniversary of Earth Month — a time when the warmer weather draws us outdoors to enjoy the changing season It is also an ideal time to consider the role each of us plays in the future of our planet we are working together to build a more sustainable future through climate and energy transition and the development of resilient communities The Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) is the University’s hub for research I know we cannot eliminate all the impacts from ongoing climate change we are living in a moment when our actions to live and work more sustainably will have a lasting impact this is a window of time of both significant challenge and significant opportunity and Northwestern has a responsibility to model positive change on our campuses while helping pave the way for vital advancements at home and around the world According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the international body that assesses science related to climate change — prompt actions that limit global warming to close to 1.5°C will reduce damage to human and natural communities This is an area where we can and must make a difference we have made great progress in our mission to advance global sustainability and energy solutions through transformational research interdisciplinary education and public engagement ISEN has been host to discovery science and academic exchanges that have influenced global advancements in fields essential to a sustainable future such as renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure We are dedicated to building on our past successes and finding new ways to collaborate to build a more resilient and equitable future for all Northwestern research across disciplines has also propelled sustainable innovation such as climate models that help policymakers grapple with complex decisions as well as sustainable materials with applications for carbon capture Year-round, we celebrate the continuing contributions of Northwestern alumni serving in sustainability and leadership roles across the world We also prepare for the future by offering current students unprecedented opportunity to study a range of subjects relating to sustainability Undergraduates can earn a certificate in sustainability and energy while graduate students can pursue our Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) These emerging leaders are making a quick impact in their careers from sustainable finance to energy management bolstered by funding from the Resnick Family Social Impact Program at ISEN have gone on to launch successful entrepreneurship and social impact initiatives addressing some of the most critical issues in climate and community resilience I invite you to visit ISEN’s interactive 2021-2025 Strategic Plan There you can learn how to support our work — whether as a student ISEN articulates a vision and commitment to accelerating the speed broadening the scale and deepening the impact of solutions worldwide We’re excited for all that we will accomplish together in the near future We invite you to join your fellow Wildcats Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Two London-based custom steel frame builders Caren Hartley of Hartley Cycles and Matt McDonough of Talbot Frameworks limited run bikes under their new combined Isen Workshop shingle Their first bike – the Isen All Season Road – is a well crafted & sparkly new disc brake road bike ready to take on everything from daily commutes to weekend adventures… Hartley & Talbot’s collaboration was formed to bring together their respective talents in intricate metal work & a modern take on classic frame building The goal was to develop a line of expertly crafted handmade bikes at a pricepoint more within reach than something fully custom but with stock geometry across a wide sizing range (47-59cm) the Isen All Season Road actually rolled out quietly earlier in 2017 And so now Isen is opening up orders for the second batch limited to 30 framesets in 2018 Those framesets are selling now for £1500 for a limited time with a 50% deposit at time of order and a roughly 10-12 week lead time Pricing will then go up to £1750 sometime at the start of the year Columbus and Dedacciai steel frame is a painted to match full carbon Columbus Futura fork and a Chris King Inset headset The Isen frames are all batch produced in London by hand by Hartley & Talbot from mud guards to a range of tire options The larger (53-59cm) bikes can fit up to 700c x 35mm or 650B x 40mm tires The smaller (47-51cm) bikes use more size appropriate wheels to get the same ride feel and ability to run wide tires without geometry or toe overlap compromises The small bikes can fit up to 650c x 35mm or 26″ x 1.6″ tires Beyond the striking hand-painted multi-color ‘Candy Fade’ paintjob Caren hand crafts the Isen headbadge for that fully custom look Then the bikes also feature a unique angular brake bridge that serves more as a fender mount for the disc-specific bikes the All Season Road also gets a size specific fork Here the larger bikes use a tapered carbon 1.25-1.125″ steerer with fender mounts But the smaller bikes use a different carbon fork that drops the fender tabs although still with space for a clip-on mud guard All bikes feature a 12mm front thru-axle paired with QR rear dropouts The bikes include two sets of water bottle bosses and routing options for both mechanical & electronic drivetrains with Di2 wires the rear brake & optional dynamo wiring routed internally Out back there is also the ability to mount a rear rack That can let riders expand their hauling capacity even beyond bikepacking bags Pre-order the adaptable steel All Season Road now to lock in the discounted pricing Then build it up in the beginning of the new year for anything from a fast road machine to a mile munching gravel endurance bike IsenWorkshop.com Cory Benson is the EU Tech Editor of Bikerumor.com Cory has been writing about mountain bikes gravel bikes & bikepacking for over 25 years even before the industry created some of these names Cory was a practicing Architect specializing in environmental sustainability has designed bike shops & bike components Cory travels extensively across Europe riding bikes meeting with key European product developers industry experts & tastemakers for an in-depth review of what’s new Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed It’s so hard to get a color fade/shift to look amazing but don’t want to deal with solvents Simpyfast claims their Lube Cube is the easiest way Peak Performance expands on their MTB specific clothing with new pants Apparently that’s an option when you’re designing products for the GOAT We spotted Cofidis racing an all-new prototype wireless 13-speed Campagnolo Super Record 13 WRL SC road groupset Canyon Bicycles is now selling select models directly through Amazon.com Want wireless shifting but don’t want to have to buy a whole new drivetrain Be protected from the sun with the new UV Hooded Trail Shirt… OrNot The new Van Nicholas Astraeus is a beautiful titanium road bike that’s limited to just 50 frames Sign up to receive our email newsletter in your inbox a stalwart of Illinois Democratic politics and a progressive voice.. Drums echoed through Welsh-Ryan Arena Saturday afternoon as Northwestern’s Native American and Indigenous.. Northwestern apologized for and condemned a performance held Tuesday in Sargent Dining Commons by Firket.. Northwestern confirmed recent cases of grant terminations payment suspensions and stop-work orders tied.. Raj Ghanekar Ducks Dan and Dave: Park Vultures Ducks Dan and Dave: Lost and Not Found Baseball: Northwestern earns milestone 10th Big Ten win amid fifth consecutive series loss Cross Country: Ellis breaks 1,500-meter record, Wildcats sweep 5,000-meter podium at Badger Challenge Maia Alvarez Since the grand reopening of the Evanston Animal Shelter in October 2024 the staff and volunteers said they have noted an increase in the number of visitors and adoptions.. Seesaw Theatre brings accessibility to theatre spaces Valentina Valcarce, Finian Hazen, and Isabela Camargos Everything Evanston: Partners of the Evanston Public Library hosts open mic poetry reading for National Poetry Month NAISA hosts fourth annual Pow Wow themed around honoring relatives By the numbers: The Trump administration has frozen millions in federal support for Northwestern. Here’s what it means for science funding on campus. Northwestern students sweep Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium awards U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky will not seek 15th term, capping a career of progressive advocacy Residents launch community organization for downtown Evanston Local crafters, shoppers connect at Maker’s Market The Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern has now become an institute complete with a new executive director and plans for expanded research and facilities now the Institute for Sustainability and Energy was launched in 2008 by former University President Henry Bienen as a five-year initiative the program has been revamped to include a larger focus on energy research “We wanted to really up our game a lot,” said chemistry Prof Ratner said ISEN initially consisted of three components: education the research component has been limited to beginning studies and pilot projects with new research facilities currently under construction at the Technological Institute that will host NU and visiting scholars “ISEN has grown into a much larger and much more effective operation that will really address some of the crucial research topics out there in the whole energy and sustainability landscape,” Ratner said Michael Wasielewski as its new executive director this year who also serves as the director of Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research Center and the Solar Fuels Institute will bring his expertise in solar energy to the program “Given that Michael was one of the leading researchers at Northwestern in the area of energy research it was a natural fit,” said earth and planetary sciences Prof Ratner said the new research facilities are expected to open in 2014 the space will function as a laboratory for NU researchers of all academic disciplines and visiting scholars to collaboratively work on energy and sustainability research initiatives “Research is sort of the beating heart of the institution so it makes sense to strengthen the research core of ISEN,” Sageman said “But that doesn’t mean that it won’t continue to do the other things that it does The education sector of ISEN includes both graduate and undergraduate classes ranging from introductory courses to collaborative courses with Kellogg Sageman said it is important to promote education and research about sustainability issues because of the potential impact energy use can have on climate change “I got to believe that the future has possibility,” he said “If my children and grandchildren are going to enjoy the same kind of wonderful world that I’ve grown up in with all of its opportunities and all of its beauty we’re going to have to solve this problem.” The ISEN Lifetime Achievement Award is given to a pioneering scientist in the field of psychiatry and to one whose work is considered extraordinary Fink received the award at the ISEN 2014 annual meeting The award was presented to him by ISEN President Georgio Petrides Fink when he practiced as a Psychiatry resident and fellow at Stony Brook a medical historian from the University of Toronto Fink’s many career accomplishments that led to his selection as the awardee: His pioneering work on the effectiveness of the new antipsychotic medications in the early 1960s; his breakthrough studies on the effects of antipsychotic drugs; his spirited defense of ECT against waves of attacks in the 1970s and beyond; his publication of the first modern manual on the use of ECT in 1979; his founding of the ECT journal Convulsive Therapy in 1984; his publication of two books Catatonia and Melancholia; and his success in having catatonia recognized as an independent diagnosis in the field of psychiatry Fink’s lifetime success is that he “thinks of psychiatry as a scientific field with the same evidentiary requirements and progress through hypothesis-construction that characterizes the rest of medicine he was emerging as an international leader ECT treatment and research When Stony Brook University Hospital opened in 1980 Fink established the laboratory of pharmaco-electroencephalography He conducted research in drug treatments and electroencephalograpy which measures and records electrical activity in the brain Fink and his colleagues to identify EEG profiles in patients for more than 60 compounds facilitating the introduction of several new psychotrophic medications Fink’s research has centered on psychopathology the syndromes of catatonia and melancholia from New York University College of Medicine in 1945 He served as a medical officer in the US Army from 1946 to 1947 and is certified as a specialist in neurology (1952) He has held Psychiatry faculty appointments at Washington University 2024 – Stony Brook Medicine (SBM) has announced several leadership changes within Stony Brook Community Medical (SBCM) and Meeting House Lane (MHL) the research findings could provide insight to how certain genes change in human neurological diseases STONY BROOK The National Science Foundation launches its first 5 pilot projects under NQVL STONY BROOK 2024 – Stony Brook University is leading a new project funded by the U.S © 2024 Stony Brook University Become a member here We use cookies to improve your browsing experience Plus an advance audio version of Ned Boulting’s upcoming column from issue 109 Rouleur takes a look at the contenders to win the Maglia Rosa in Italy this month Alexander Vinokourov's team are making the impossible rather quite possible All the essential information about the first Grand Tour of the year While the former Olympic and World champion is relishing new ventures in retirement she is keen to ensure more support is in place for those.. From SD Worx-Protime's continued success to Canyon-SRAM's disappointment Rouleur takes a look at how each squad performed at the Spring Classics Enjoy a digital subscription to Rouleur for just £4 per month and get access to our award-winning magazines Join today for exclusive content from independent journalists This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Left: British Parliament member Nadhim Zahawi in official British government photo Right: One of the Warhol paintings in question UPDATE 2/22/2016: British Parliament member Nadhim Zahawi has withdrawn his lawsuit against Philadelphia gallery owner Nathan “Nicky” Isen The transactions of prominent Philadelphia gallery owner Nathan “Nicky” Isen have long been the subject of speculation and controversy, as detailed by Philadelphia magazine’s Steve Volk in this August 2015 feature Isen was sentenced to community service and probation in federal court after pleading guilty to money laundering and now he has raised the ire of a prominent British politician Iraqi-born Nadhim Zahawi has been a member of the British parliament since 2010 and he recently took a $28,000-per-month part-time gig with the Iraqi oil company Gulf Keystone According to Zahawi’s complaint that was filed on Tuesday Isen agreed to sell various Andy Warhol paintings to Zahawi Zahawi says that Isen told him that he could have Warhol’s Pine Barren Tree Frog for $49,500 and other images depicting a frog ($52,500) and rhinoceros ($62,500) as well as two Warhol paintings of Mao Tse-tung ($52,500 and $49,500) Zahawi was most interested in the two Mao paintings and Isen sent him invoices in September for the two paintings totaling $101,330 (Zahawi has included copies of those invoices with the lawsuit.) He also says he told Isen that he wanted four of the Warhol animal paintings The lawsuit states that Zahawi transferred just over $100,000 to Isen’s account in Barclays Bank in London at Isen’s direction Isen denied having received the funds — that is until Zahawi’s attorneys (well they call them “solicitors” over there) contacted Isen Zahawi says he told him to transfer another $50,000 to an Indonesian account which would have gone toward the animal paintings that he wanted And it’s at this point that Zahawi says red flags went up “The direction to send funds to an account in Indonesia was concerning to Mr Zahawi’s solicitors in England and caused Mr Zahawi to lose confidence that Defendants were being honest and forthright in their business dealings with him,” reads the suit Zahawi asked Isen to ship him the two Mao paintings that he had already paid for Isen allegedly confirmed that he would do so and repeatedly asked for Zahawi’s shipping address saying that Zahawi didn’t wire a cent to Isen “I guess he must be in trouble in London,” says Isen “So he’s trying to come up with something.” Zahawi’s Center City attorney Joseph Armstrong tells Philadelphia magazine that his office has an email signed by Isen confirming receipt of the transfer in question though he declined to provide a copy until he had a chance to confer with his client Zahawi is an extremely busy man and even busier since what happened in Paris,” says Armstrong explaining that Zahawi is heavily involved in issues of national security and we are disappointed that it came to this.” among other offenses and seeks damages equal to the amount Zahawi says he paid Isen in addition to interest Follow @VictorFiorillo on Twitter Where to Live If You Love Having a Round With Your Friends The Grammy Awards: A Philadelphia Timeline of Winners and Memorable Moments Subscribe to BuzzFeed Daily NewsletterCaret DownHow Can We Expand The Way We Write About Our Identities?It’s important to consider what kinds of stories we keep asking writers of color to tell and that those stories go beyond performing suffering on the page a loving dig at how easy it is to make googly eyes at your navel But it’s also a minor exorcism: By articulating the urge I make myself evaluate the kernel at its heart Say I started drafting one of those essays-that-weren’t the one about blasting The Massacre with the windows down Once the scene was set and it was time to lay down something like a thesis I’d have cornered myself into uttering the same phrase but without which the essay might lack some logical or emotional core: “As a woman of color…” repetitive signals of personal distress.” Across multiple essays writers transmit versions of the same call — “I’m scared,” “I’m hurt,” “I’m grieving” — in an effort to be heard and understood But the best refrains did something else as well More than just trying to translate the writer’s struggles they looked outward to consider what value it might offer to a reader it’s the difference between an SOS signal and a lighthouse — not just a signpost of your pain but a warning to prevent another’s suffering my experience of x can leave me feeling hopelessly in-between” — was textbook SOS and certain scenes snapped into focus: That was violence the relief and the fury of this naming were enough I began to feel that the pressure to make my mixed-race identity my rhetorical crux was as much externally imposed as it was self-inflicted I posed a range of questions to which my body’s unreadability kept resurfacing as the often unintended answer: Why did I leave the music industry What does it mean to see yourself represented in a text These pieces — all ones that I stand behind and worked on with smart where the choice to serve up suffering wasn’t always mine Things get tricky when your refrain is tied up in an identity claim and trickier still when that identity is an axis What if that’s the thing they love most about the piece not every editor even asks permission to press on the bruise — I’ve made brief nods to my blackness for context and they’ve spotlit the mention and pushed on it hard to the point that it drowned out my argument writer and theorist Mari Ruti discusses the role of our traumas in our stories of self-making that “who we are has a great deal to do with how we have been wounded.” But that’s qualitatively different from building our bodies of work around this original wound I came to understand something that continues to shape my thinking: Despite the position from which I write I also want that work to bloom around a richer core than the supposed pain of racial difference then I need a refrain that does more open-ended unexpected work than just announcing the color of my skin as the intellectual bottom line — even if that tortured pose is the kind of work that editors expect then it’s incumbent on both writers and editors to ensure that this increased visibility doesn’t occur at the expense of depth I want to emphasize that these questions on how to write identity are very much a two-way street that it’s not all a conspiracy of cookie-cutter editorial practices under the guise of diversifying content I want these writers to get their work out and get their money to feel the peerless satisfaction of clarifying a sensation or experience that was once kept opaque to them that’s going to hinge on an identity claim and it’s a crucial time to be doing that kind of political work But it’s also worth considering the refrain that writer and editor collaboratively produce: What lives at the core of the stories you tell about yourself What narratives of trauma are you coaxing out of people who might be trying to express something else thereby cementing one person’s views — in this case an emphasis on racial trauma as central to living — as the definitive version of black womanhood It reifies what writing about identity “ought” to look like making it harder for writers in her wake to step from this path “But that’s not my story.” White women might read it and think Khakpour notes that the stakes of such a narrow beat are also existential provoking in its writers the urgent question: “Who am I outside of what they see me as?” In addition to editorial strategies like Khakpour’s there are ways to tackle the question as writers Zadie Smith’s most recent essay collection takes a different approach to broadening the ways we think about identity writing Smith plants herself firmly on the lighthouse side of Zimmerman’s dichotomy: “I feel this — do you I’m struck by this thought — are you?” Her manner of reaching out to the reader is informed by her view of the self as unbounded and fluid: a “malleable and improvised response” to the world and language It’s a far cry from the call to carve up our bodies into their constituent oppressions the all-too-common misuse of “intersectionality.” But Smith is also aware that her view of selfhood is somewhat dated especially in the face of a political reality explicit about its assault on various identity categories one that brings with it the pressure — even the need — for those identities to be boldly asserted “who went from being ordinary people to heroes through their ability to perceive the things others missed I wanted to see if I too could obtain these powers through observation.” I glimpsed a version of myself within this perfect moment in the desire to make sense of your world while swimming in the soup of a still-forming identity; the proto-hope that writing will bring this sense of clarity; the knowledge of the reader and the narrator — but not yet the boy — that There are more ways to reach from the page than the mere fact of seeing your identity represented The motif of the observant outsider continues to resurface throughout that essay — Chee is one of the only nonwhite students on exchange — but he resists the narrative of pained in-betweenness Chee admits to being less exoticized in Mexico than when he’s at home in Maine but he presents the predictable mixed-race story as an option rather than a given avoiding the easy answer: “In the United States and I didn’t feel confused except as to why it was so hard for everyone to understand that I existed.” He’s not hopelessly lost as a result of his identity; rather In a memorable scene toward the essay’s end — and it seems crucial that Chee’s work moves in scenes driven as much by novelistic description as by a rhetorical bottom line — he uses his newfound fluency in Spanish to convince a couple of party guests that he is a boy called Alejandro from Tijuana This act of theatrics sets the tone for many of the pieces that follow foregrounding the pleasure and power of the masks that we don to perform versions of ourselves In an essay called “The Writing Life,” Chee describes the semester he spent taking Annie Dillard’s literary nonfiction class at Wesleyan University the literary essay was “a moral exercise that involved direct engagement with the unknown whether it was a foreign civilization or your mind.” Rather than closing on the expected story When Chee arrives at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop he announces that he’s “taking this parade down the middle of the road,” carving out space for himself as a gay Korean American writer amid the program’s stifling whiteness he continues to center his body and politics in what he brings to the page specific self-exploration can still look outward welcoming another into the unknown of writing yourself rather than foisting a map on them right off the bat and marking all of the intersections that meet at the point where you live on confronting the story the world foists onto mixed-race people: “[It] felt like discovering your shoe was nailed to the floor defined by the limited imaginations of others.” Let’s stop nailing writers’ shoes to the floor Not long after I noticed the pattern of my personal writing — that all my inquiries were reducible to the same bottom line — I decided that I was going to withdraw myself from my work entirely I scrubbed my prose of anecdotes or personal pronouns; I wrote careful reviews that hid those bits of opinion at risk of being traced back to a body Even if I’m not writing a piece that explicitly lassoes in the personal I can’t stand to cut that channel off entirely; it’s not much better than having my work rewritten to convey a sense of pain that I don’t feel I come to the page to attend to the specificity of my experience — to achieve clarity by explaining myself to myself whether I’m staging my encounter with a text or a woman in line at the grocery who wants to touch my hair I want to let myself into my work not in droplets or fragments or anything so jealously guarded nor in the unfiltered gush that shapes the clichéd idea of the personal essay Chee’s use of scenes offers a guide for the kind of writer that I’m working to become If I told the story of my Kafkaesque law school years I would want to dwell on their curious characters and emotional textures alert to how such things were shaped by the institution’s whiteness but not feeling pressed to shuffle every detail into line behind a clickbait claim of violence I’m trying to keep an eye on both halves of the equation: not just the intimacy of exposure but the act of the telling — the idea that if we follow the scenes of our story closely enough we might find twists that generate conclusions different from the ones our bodies suggest Tajja Isen is a Toronto-based writer and voice actor. Her recent work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Rumpus, Electric Literature, and Catapult, where she is also a contributing editor. Send help right to the people and causes you care about Your donation is protected by the GoFundMe Giving Guarantee Link IconCopy linkFacebook LogoShare on FacebookXShare on XEmailShare via EmailLink copied to clipboardIrvin Isen retired president of Paramount PackagingIrvin "Ernie" Isen retired president of Paramount Packaging in Chalfont at Lankenau Hospital of complications from Parkinson's disease Isen began working with his three brothers in the family's paper businesses Eventually the brothers hired managers for two of the companies and ran the day-to-day operations of the third the firm was focusing on polyethylene packaging Paramount was the largest manufacturer of plastic bread bags in the United States Isen knew that the line about the importance of plastics in the movie The Graduate was both funny and true Combining his ideas with the skills of Paramount engineers Isen developed new packaging products and was responsible for more than a dozen patents Paramount developed packages with handles for disposable diapers and produced packaging for Huggies and all of Kimberly-Clark's personal-care products It teamed with a French company to develop packaging for gourmet coffee and produced wrappers for Hershey bars Isen grew up in Wynnefield and graduated from Overbrook High School in 1942 he served in the Army Quartermaster Corps in New York City he had been married to Carole Brenner Isen supported many charitable and arts organizations in the city they cochaired the Harvest Ball to benefit Albert Einstein Medical Center The Inquirer reported at the time that the event was the most successful in the Harvest Ball's 26-year history Isen loved swimming in the pool at his home and inviting numerous friends and family to Rosh Hashanah dinner every year Tina Fox; brothers Theodore and Harold; and four grandchildren Donations may be made to Parkinson Council Inc.