New Lebowski Tome Worthy of the Dude

The Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski has a growing body of critical literature to support it, though like the Dude, it moves at an abiding pace. Out now is The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies, a collection of papers from the Lebowski Fest in Louisville—in 2006. "The book is, like the Dude himself, a little rough around the edges," writes Dwight Garner in the New York Times. "But it’s worth an end-of-the-year holiday pop-in."

One example should suffice to illustrate the collection’s “wobbly Zen-acuity.” In “On the White Russian,” a literature professor explores the Dude’s favorite drink in revelatory detail. Ever think of Leon Trotsky as “doubly implicated” in the cream concoction because he fought the White Army and lived in Mexico, “Kahlúa’s country of origin?” To bring it back to the flick, the scholar asserts that the Dude has a sort of “Trotskian positionality.” Drink up. (More Jeff Bridges stories.)