Welcome to Free Expression on the Weekend.
Free Ex’s Jack Butler sat down with accomplished pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn to discuss his career, the state of the arts and his optimism about the future of classical music.
If you haven’t already, please take a moment to follow us on X/Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Social media helps us get the word out about the fun we’re having at Free Expression. We are having fun, aren’t we?
Since I have you here, let me point you to a few things I’ve read this week, in the Journal and beyond.
In today’s paper, frequent Free Ex contributor Tunku Varadarajan interviews the new face of urban renewal, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt. Before sitting down with Mr. Pratt, Tunku took a bracing detour through MacArthur Park, where, if you’re old enough to remember, someone once left a cake out in the rain:
I saw hundreds of addicts, many hunched over while standing up, like waxwork men melting in the sun. Men and women injected themselves in plain view. A group were piled onto a prone body, fists flailing, beating the victim to a pulp. A man tried to wrestle a Canada goose, while a woman defecated at the edge of the park’s lake. On a corner, a charity-operated food truck doled out lunches to a long, shuffling line. The squalor was breathtaking.
That’s great stuff, right there. Don’t miss Tunku’s spectacular feature.
Speaking of not-to-be missed, our Free Ex columnist Kyle Smith moonlights as the Journal’s film critic. This week he sat through “Pressure,” the D-Day meteorology drama starring Brendan Fraser as Dwight D. Eisenhower, so you don’t have to:
For anyone with a passing acquaintance with military ways, the movie is eye-gougingly painful, with senior officers lounging around half out of uniform, ties askew or missing, their headgear AWOL when they go outdoors. . . . It’s as if every actor on hand were told to behave like a vain, semi-insolent millennial.
Kyle knows the U.S. Army from the inside, having kept the vital flow of manila folders and triplicate forms moving through Saudi Arabia during Gulf War I. Check out his fun review.
Deep-dish pizza fan Pope Leo XIV dropped his first encyclical this week. Although these calorie-rich contributions to the deposit of faith sometimes take centuries to digest, everybody at the scribbler’s table barely waited for grace to conclude before diving right in. There is a great hunger, it seems, for spiritual direction—and debate—among the journalist class. Among my favorite takes were Barton Swaim’s Protestant-inflected “Pope Leo Aims to Please,” the editorial board’s “Pope Leo’s Anti-AI Manifesto” and the Lamp editor Matthew Walther’s “We Have to Do It Ourselves.”
All the Straight Ladies
Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s new book is an affectionate tribute to women’s unrequited desire.
‘Gang’ Warfare Comes for Trump
The president has alienated a decisive bloc of Republican senators who could cause him trouble.
The British Museum’s Shameful Surrender to the Mob
Canceling events over ‘security concerns’ gives bullies and frauds exactly what they want.
By Dominic Green
No Bride a Borrower
High-interest wedding loans are a terrible idea. Get rid of them.
By JP De Gance
Does the Pope Use Air Conditioning?
It’s reasonable to warn that technological progress could be harmful. It’s unreasonable to think it can be stopped.
Belle Burden and the Storyteller’s Dilemma
In memoir there’s often a trade-off between making it accurate and keeping it interesting.
By Meghan Cox Gurdon
