The Writing on the Wall
Ian Brunskill's American Interest review of the 2009 It Books reissue of Mailer's The Faith of Graffiti, reading the book against the wave of revolutionary street art in the Arab Spring.
Read an excerpt (rights pending)
Ian Brunskill’s American Interest review, occasioned by the 2009 It Books reissue of Mailer’s The Faith of Graffiti (128 pp., $35). Brunskill takes Mailer’s 1974 meditation on New York subway graffiti as a lens on the revolutionary street art of the Arab Spring — from the schoolboys’ slogan that sparked the Syrian uprising to the murals of Tahrir Square — testing how far graffiti is a genuine instrument of political change and how far a “peaceful challenge to the status quo” that acquires force in the saying.