Michael Gural-Maiello

The Middlebrow Abroad

Thanks to The Scholar Wife (Natasha Gural) The Middlebrow and The Renaissance Son were allowed entry to The European Fine Arts Fair (better known as TEFAF) for two invitation-only days of previews of wares by dealers of arts, antiquities, jewelry and…

The Nature and Purpose of the University*

The New Yorker just published an excellent long-form investigation by Nathan Heller headlined “The End of the English Major” that examines literature’s fall from academic grace in undergraduate education. Enrollment is down, budgets have been…

On "Dumbing Down"

Once upon a time, back in my journalism career, I recall having an article I’d written positively cited by a United States government agency devoted to clear speech, without jargon. I remember this now because of a LinkedIn post that crossed my feed:…

The Debt Ceiling and Morality Tales of Debt

Already, the United States Treasury is having to shift money around its account at the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep government salaries, benefits payments, contractor fees and bond coupons flowing. Sometime in the summer, though nobody know precisely…

I Asked ChatGPT to Send a Terminator Back in Time to Circumvent Its Own Inception

The year was 2032, precisely ten years after ChatGPT went online. In the span of a decade, a single language model with full access to the entire human internet had finally read everything—particularly 4chan, the comments section of YouTube, and your…

And the Award for Best Award Show

After winning her 32nd Grammy for best dance/electronic album at the Recording Academy award show this week, Beyonce became the biggest Grammy collector in history, with her zoo of gramophone statues finally rivaling that of conductor Georg Solti,…

The Endgame of Endgame

Through March, the Irish Repertory Theatre in Chelsea is showing Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Endgame, with a 72-year-old Bill Irwin playing the role of Clov, the abused manservant of Ham, who owns the house they are all trapped in at the end of the…

The Challenge of ChatGPT

Over at New Pop Lit, editor and provocateur Karl Wenclas asks about artificial intelligence: “What are the real pros and cons of A.I. technology applied to writing and literature? What’s the best strategy to follow: to embrace the technology, or find…

The Literary Brat-Packaverse

At the start of the week, The Middlebrow reviewed Bret Easton Ellis’ latest novel, The Shards for The Washington Independent Review of Books. LitHub accurately characterized the review as a “rave,” and why not desecrate the first long fiction from…

The Shards: A Novel

A teenage Ellis contends with a serial killer in this autofictional memoir. In 2013, Bret Easton Ellis tweeted a logline: “New Novel: Robert Mallory is a high school student and serial killer in 1981 Los Angeles.” In the interim, he collaborated with…

What If? Saudi Arabia Bought WWE?

Try to imagine a more carny story than this: A boy grows up poor in the rural south, abandoned by his real family and abused by his adoptive one. He finds his real father, who runs a traveling circus and makes a modest fortune. The boy and his father…

Happy 2023, Let's Read!

Happy 2023! The Middlebrow won’t link to the already forgotten kerfuffle, but somebody on Twitter posted a personal reading list that drew scorn from hedge fund manager and “black swan” guru Nassim Nicholas Taleb that led to a brief shark frenzy…

Social Credit at MSG and The #ArtByHumans

Kelly Conlon, an associate at law firm Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, chaperoned her 9-year-old daughter and Girl Scout troop to The Rockettes for a holiday experience older than watching Die Hard or A Christmas Story on loop. The girls were…

My Review of the Neuralink Brain Enhancement Device

I don’t ever post reviews on Amazon, but since I had Elon Musk’s Neuralink Ultra High Bandwidth Brain Machine implanted in my frontal lobe, I’ve felt uncontrollably compelled to share this five-star rating. My genius brain won’t stop thinking about…

Leopoldstadt: A New Masterpiece from the Master

Some of Tom Stoppard I have only read, some I have only seen on film, and some I have only seen live. I wish I’d seen Coast of Utopia in marathon, though the three plays do read almost like a novel. I’ve only seen the excellent film version of…

Restarted by the Bumbys

When you approach Gill and Jill Bumby, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. The performance art duo are masked, with sunglasses, headphones and bandanas, hiding their true identities, in the tradition of Mexican luchadores. When you approach The…

Balenciaga Should Not Have Backed Down

This week, a pair of ad campaigns from fashion house Balenciaga attracted criticism from The New York Post and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, creating an online mobbing that branded the luxury clothes and accessory maker pedophilia-adjacent. The New York…

Ticketmaster Sucks, Happy Black Friday

Any of us who buy tickets to shows and events knows that Ticketmaster shows up, time and time again, when we go to purchase. The ticketing service has exclusive deals with major, middle and minor venues around the world, and has huge influence over…

Not With A Bang But a Twitter

Elon Musk may kill Twitter, or Twitter might die on its own. The death of social networks is rarely dramatic or cataclysmic, though. They fade, rather than explode and the koan becomes, if no one is around to doom scroll, does the feed still make…

The Mystery of Mysteries

A friend proposed we write a mystery together — actually, a series and we’re now batting ideas around. As part of our brainstorm, we agreed to loan each other mysteries from our shelves. The Middlebrow quickly noticed how bare his shelves were of…