The first thing I learned from Louis Menard’s book on art and culture in the Cold War is enough about John Lennon’s early life to recognize how much MacLennon I’d read during my teenage Poppy Z Brite phase. So it is only appropriate that Menard also taught me how to appreciate Mark Carney’s ability to capitalize on an extraordinary cultural victory for Canada in an uncertain political time and knod sagely at this picture. Well played, Prime Minister.
To be clear, Louis Menard’s The Free World: Art and Culture in the Cold War is an insightful, accessible work of history with a lens on how culture drives politics that has a lot of contemporary relevance but also makes one, if one is also a tumblrina, see how much Hudson Williams, not long ago merely the hottest boy in the suburban Vancouver Spaghetti Warehouse is doing to keep NATO intact in the face of Trumpian nonsense. Similar shit happened to Elvis.
