menu_open Columnists
Philip Martin

Philip Martin

Arkansas Online

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Golf, Aging and the Limits of Optimization Culture

Golf, Aging and the Limits of Optimization Culture

Recently a launch monitor informed me, politely but conclusively, that I am no longer the golfer I used to be.

yesterday 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Why The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” changed popular music forever

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Why The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” changed popular music forever

Sixty years after Brian Wilson turned studio pop inward, outward and upside down, The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ remains less a nostalgic artifact...

previous day 1

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Andy Beta’s ‘Cosmic Music’ reconsiders the genius of Alice Coltrane

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Andy Beta’s ‘Cosmic Music’ reconsiders the genius of Alice Coltrane

Andy Beta’s ‘Cosmic Music’ argues that the pianist, harpist and spiritual visionary was never merely adjacent to jazz greatness. The culture...

previous day 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

‘The Promise of America’ and the crisis of shared civic language

‘The Promise of America’ and the crisis of shared civic language

Democrat-Gazette online

previous day 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

TELEVISION | OPINION: ‘Beef’ season 2 review — Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac and Korean cinema influences elevate the series

TELEVISION | OPINION: ‘Beef’ season 2 review — Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac and Korean cinema influences elevate the series

Netflix’s anthology reinvention ‘Beef’ trades the first season’s operatic chaos for something sharper and more unsettling.

14.05.2026 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POP NOTES | OPINION: Hollywood’s bio-pics can be a mixed bag

POP NOTES | OPINION: Hollywood’s bio-pics can be a mixed bag

The worthwhile music bio-pics understand that musicians are often not reliable narrators of their own lives. Neither are managers, estates, fans,...

14.05.2026 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

A neighborhood reflection on Toxirns, ‘Chugs’ and hybrid vigor

A neighborhood reflection on Toxirns, ‘Chugs’ and hybrid vigor

Our dogs are better known than we are.

12.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Two books explore love, silence and loyalty

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Two books explore love, silence and loyalty

Douglas Stuart’s “John of John” explores inheritance, repression and the burdens fathers pass to sons, while Alice Hoffman’s “The Best Dog...

11.05.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Mother’s Day 2026: An 89-Year-Old’s Waveland Casino Trip and the Wisdom of Knowing When to Stop

Mother’s Day 2026: An 89-Year-Old’s Waveland Casino Trip and the Wisdom of Knowing When to Stop

We thought about driving to Mississippi last week to meet my 89-year-old mother and her posse--Aunt Lois and Uncle Ken, and Paula and Gerald, who...

10.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: With release of new album, Ringo Starr’s ‘individual sound’ worth revisiting

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: With release of new album, Ringo Starr’s ‘individual sound’ worth revisiting

While conventional wisdom might have Ringo as underrated rock drummer and a decent bloke, he was also perhaps the wisest and most grounded member of...

09.05.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Keith Whitley: Last traditional country singer and an Americana forebear

Keith Whitley: Last traditional country singer and an Americana forebear

Democrat-Gazette online

09.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

TELEVISION | OPINION: ‘Criminal Record’ — How Apple TV+ brings British crime skepticism to American audiences

TELEVISION | OPINION: ‘Criminal Record’ — How Apple TV+ brings British crime skepticism to American audiences

Season two of ‘Criminal Record’ turns the crime procedural inside out, asking not what happened but who gets to decide what counts.

07.05.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: David Allan Coe — The unruly legacy of an outlaw country music star

POPNOTES | OPINION: David Allan Coe — The unruly legacy of an outlaw country music star

He wrote great country songs and lived the mythology. He also made records that many listeners still find indefensible. Any honest obituary has to...

07.05.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The work of small things reveals life almost back to normal

I have lately appointed myself the god of small things, our household's chief piddler. It's not an especially demanding portfolio--mostly I run...

05.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Class anxiety and art criticism in 2026 — a review of ‘Mutiny’ and ‘How It Feels to Be Alive’

Two recently published books circle the same question from opposite directions: How do you recognize where you stand? In "Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt...

04.05.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The kayfabe reflex

The unseen shooter never got past the first ring of security. Shots were fired two stories up. The sound carried just enough to trigger a reaction....

03.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Blood on the dance floor

In Antoine Fuqua's movie "Michael," everything is polished and pressed, the beats familiar, the arc pre-approved. Childhood: rough. Talent: obvious....

03.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Forensic science, uncertainty, and ‘classical mistakes’

New biography of Alan R. Moritz traces how forensic science learned to define what it can — and cannot — know.

02.05.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Clash of ’76 — the music, the movies, the books

Call it the Clash of 1976 — not a roster but a diagnosis. A culture realizing it has more than one argument on its hands and refusing to settle it.

02.05.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: Grandson doesn’t hold back writing about forensic pioneer Alan R. Moritz

Rob Moritz, a former reporter who covered Arkansas politics for Stephens Media and now teaches journalism at the University of Central Arkansas, came...

02.05.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Buying the truck I already know

Democrat-Gazette online

02.05.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

HOME MOVIES | OPINION: May Blu-ray releases — the new DVD economy

As studios drift from discs, boutique labels step in — Criterion restores ‘Stray Dog’ to full voice while Arrow reclaims ‘Blue Thunder’ and...

30.04.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Why ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966) remains the most unsettling film about insurgency and power

“The Battle of Algiers,” released in 1966, isn’t about terrorism, colonialism or insurgency in the tidy way a term paper is about its topic....

30.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Before ‘Little Bighorn’: April 1876, Custer and ‘Son of the Morning Star’

I went through a box of books I hadn't opened since we moved six years ago, intending to send a stack to the neighborhood Little Free Library or to...

28.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Lidie sets out again in new novel

There's a literary move that can be mistaken for caution. A novelist returns to a familiar character and a book with a modest afterlife becomes a book...

27.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Even better than the real thing

There it is again, lighting up the phone like a digital saint's card: Donald Trump, in full messiah drag, haloed and ready for worship. Not exactly a...

26.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: History of Arkansas craft beer — from Vino’s Brewpub to Lost Forty and beyond

In a state where beer once meant whatever came off the truck, a looser, more local culture has taken hold — one that resists settling on a single...

25.04.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: William Kennedy’s Albany — more than a trilogy

The Library of America gathers “Legs,” “Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game” and “Ironweed” into “The Albany Trilogy,” but William...

25.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The Southern Poverty Law Center indictment and what it actually proves

Democrat-Gazette online

25.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: ‘Margo’ shows survival is often just an act

Early in Apple TV’s “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” Margo — played by Elle Fanning — does something that should, in the grammar of...

23.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: New Albums and 2026 Reissues Examined

What happens when artists, at different points in their careers, decide to strip away a layer or two of insulation and see what's left standing?

23.04.2026 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Why we don’t measure our lives by the calendar

We don't need physics to recognize the relative nature of time; just look at the ways we mark it.

21.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Lerner’s ‘Transcription’ — Themes of memory, fiction and digital life

At the start of Ben Lerner's startling new novel "Transcription," a man sits on a train trying to read and failing because he is facing the wrong...

20.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Why Some Young Men Turn to the Manosphere—and Why Most Don’t

A young man ain't nothing in the world these days.

19.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Two ways of telling a life story — ‘Small Town Girls’ by Jayne Ann Phillips and ‘Go Gentle’ by Maria Semple

Jayne Ann Phillips looks back without imposing a moral; Maria Semple keeps things moving before one can form. A memoir and a comic novel meet in their...

18.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITIAL MASS | OPINION: Gillian Welch’s ‘Revival’ at 30 — How a fully formed debut redefined Americana without trying to

Only in retrospect does Gillian Welch's 1996 album "Revival" feel like a beginning.

18.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Simple golf ritual reveals value of practice, mindfulness, and routine

Democrat-Gazette online

18.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POP NOTES | OPINION: Summer season cinema

Movies cover all the genres, but how many sequels and reboots do we really need?

16.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

What matters in how you approach Lincoln, the man, the legend

On April 14, 1865, a man slipped into a theater, waited for a laugh line, and changed the shape of American memory.

14.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

How Violence Close to Home Changes the Way We See Patterns of Crime

I was 7 years old when Richard Speck made me aware the world could turn intimate spaces--rooms, beds, the ordinary geometry of safety--into killing...

12.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: What makes whisky ‘exceptional’? That’s become a matter of opinion

My late father-in-law, Yanko, was not mobbed up, although he knew people and how the world worked, which in certain regions of the country is a...

11.04.2026 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Deciding when to look away — Benjamin Saltzman’s ‘Turning Away’

Benjamin Saltzman’s ‘Turning Away’ suggests that averting the gaze is not evasion but a form of recognition — one that complicates what we...

11.04.2026 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Jack Nicklaus’ 1986 Masters: The 65, back nine 30, and golf’s enduring myth

Democrat-Gazette online

11.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘Lone Star’ — What the ground gives up

A skeleton in the Texas desert reopens a buried history in ‘Lone Star’ — and exposes the stories a town tells to live with itself.

09.04.2026 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Continuity in music rarely about staying the same

If there is a throughline for the following reviews, it isn't genre or even era so much as adjustment under pressure -- artists recalibrating what...

09.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Why Americans still pay taxes even when the system feels unfair

I don't have much trouble doing my taxes. Not because they're simple; they aren't. I've always just seen them as basic adult skills, like tying a tie...

07.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Running ahead — ‘Encounters,’ ‘Down Time’

How much clarity is useful if it doesn't lead anywhere? In his comic novel "Down Time," Andrew Martin writes about people who can describe their lives...

06.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Trump Isn’t a King. The System Around Him Is the Real Story

Recent "No Kings" rallies have the virtue of clarity. The slogan told you what was being rejected. It said less about how to understand the thing...

05.04.2026 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Jim Thompson and the Rise of Noir’s Dark Vision of America

Each generation gets the crime writer it deserves. Picture the handoff: The 1920s swapped monocles for brass knuckles, as Dashiell Hammett yanked the...

05.04.2026 30

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: ‘You’ve got to start from a place of truth’ — Ray McKinnon

A new Blu-ray release brings “Randy and the Mob” and the Oscar-winning short “The Accountant” back into circulation, both newly restored, both...

04.04.2026 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin