We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
Inside the cover story of this week’s paper, a number of writers score their first ever Washington City Paper bylines, including Abigail Adams, Mark Twain, and Sinclair Lewis. OK, OK, they’re actually excerpts from a new anthology of Washington literature—-snapshots of the city before we associated its writerly class with policy wonks and thriller writers.
Ramon Ramirez leads the arts section with his profile of local hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory—-an outfit whose genre-defying music, and not necessarily its association with a certain controversial academic, has it poised to become a rare local rap export. Tricia Olszewski reviews Harry (Potter, that is) and Terri (in which John C. Reilly‘s antics do not impress her). Rebecca J. Ritzel becomes a willing participant in The Complete World of Sports (abridged) at the Kennedy Center. David Dunlap reviews the new solo album by Fiery Furnaces singer Eleanor Friedberger. Justin Moyer pens a heroic takedown of the book Retromania, in which the critic Simon Reynolds says pop music has become to nostalgic. And we ran just a sampling of our unfuckwitable Fringe & Purge blog. Read it!