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Articles of NoteTo some, evolutionary psychology is fatalistic: Our defects are in our genes. To Steven Pinker, it explains how to make life better... more» Who’s shaping the marketplace of ideas? A survey of the world’s most influential thinkers suggests that Arab activists are setting the agenda... more» John Waters is glad that people feel comfortable coming out of the closet. And yet: “I wish some gay people would go back in. We have enough”... more» Jürgen Habermas is angry. “Our politicians have no political substance.” If the EU fails, he warns, democracy will be set back 100 years... more» The mystery of mirth. Comedy is the brain’s way of correcting our mistaken assumptions. But does that explain the pleasure of a punch line?... more» Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose – biologist, botanist, crank – revealed the secret life of plants, including the fearsome power of a boiling pea... more» We will get over the notion of free will, says the neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. Moral agency comes from living in social groups... more» How a Canadian in a bathtub, together with transgender radicals, and a “mystical anarchist” organized a revolution on Wall Street... more» The Warhol bubble. Auction prices for his work have jumped 3,400 percent in 25 years. Time for a market correction in contemporary art... more» Neanderthal neuroscience. What are humans made of? Find 40,000-year-old hominid pinky bone, extract the DNA, compare and contrast... more» If you’ve been at death’s door or your wits’ end, about to bite the dust or cast the first stone, you’ve inhabited the King James Bible... more» The study of human illness depends on bloated rodents. Biomedical innovation has stalled, but behold the awesome power of the buck-toothed mole... more»... more»... more» Jonesing for Freakonomics: Social psychologists are addicted to findings that make headlines. Data massaging is warping the field... more» Gloria Steinem, still tiny of waist and big of hair, wants you to know that she has never gotten by on her appearance. “Who wants to be feminine?”... more» Liberals are stupid, according to a ballyhooed study. Now it’s been retracted. Turns out conservatives are stupid, too... more» Behavioral economics has moved to the policy world. The ideas are being tested on a national scale. How’s that going? Not well... more» Ticking toward eternity. Can a massive, 10,000-year clock provide some long-term perspective to our instantly gratified culture?... more» Daniel Kahneman has spent a lifetime thinking about thinking. His catalog of cognitive quirks reveals the limits of intuition... more» Camus the Jew. He was born a Catholic and died an atheist, but his philosophy of the absurd reveals a deep bond to Judaism... more» Steve Jobs wasn’t an inventor. He was a tweaker, an idiosyncratic perfectionist who took other people’s ideas and made them better... more» SlutWalk, body-snarking, cisgender: Feminism thrives on the Internet. Come for Ryan Gosling, stay for fashion, porn, and poststructuralism... more» For Picasso, originality was rooted in imitation – and theft. Did Cubism emerge from the ears of an Iberian statuette looted from the Louvre?... more» Geeks in love. When obsessive math whizzes mate, it’s bad genetic news for their offspring, says Simon Baron-Cohen. That’s the theory, anyway... more» My brain made me do it. Can neuroscience distinguish between an automatic impulse and a self-directed action? Mike Gazzaniga chooses to weigh the evidence... more» Gushing optimism and cultural ferment – 150 new magazines in Benghazi alone. It’s a good time for intellectuals in Libya. Just ask Hisham Matar... more» Between Pauline Kael and Joan Didion, the enmity was mutual. The suffering-princess act grated Kael. “I’ve done soul-wrestling. It’s not tough”... more» When Groucho Marx met T.S. Eliot. The Jewish wit and the morose anti-Semite shared a friendship and a compulsion: extreme frankness... more» Ilya Khrzhanovsky has erected a film-set panopticon. Civilians act out his fantasies; everyone snitches; the cameras never stop rolling... more» He had brown eyes and a taste for greasy food. Had he not been murdered, a heart attack would have done him in. Defrosting the Iceman... more» The future of Freud. Psychoanalysis is changing, but not him: still a cocaine-sniffing, cigar-chomping punchline... more» Russia in the 1920s: Desperate times produced utopian architecture. Never before had avant-garde design been official government policy... more» Retractions in scholarly journals are on the rise. Why? Let’s ask an editor. “It’s none of your damn business!”... more» Literature and the loo. For Henry Miller, the toilet enriched certain works: Ulysses could not be read anywhere else... more» In bed by 9, awake by 4: Haruki Murakami’s novels, a brew of ennui and exoticism, emerge from a highly regimented life... more» The greatest director, writer, and producer in the history of radio died this week. They were all Norman Corwin. He was 101... more» Tough crowd. There’s nothing like lecturing on Tolstoy to an audience of fiercely loyal kin, judgmental literary critics, and Russian novelists... more» Having dissected her own staggering misfortune, Joan Didion might look like a self-help guru. Don’t be fooled. She’s indifferent to your pain... more» What’s ugly beyond belief, singed, moldy, water-stained, and, until now, inaccessible? Archimedes’ brain in a box... more» Anarchism in action. The intellectual origins of Occupy Wall Street aren’t in Cambridge or Morningside Heights. They’re in Madagascar... more» Violence and misogyny are loud and clear in hip-hop. But pause the criticism. Listen carefully. Hear that? It’s the sound of capitalism... more» Noël Coward likened reading a footnote to going downstairs to answer the door while making love. Digression didn’t suit him. He’s not alone... more» The biologist and the billionaire. What’s E.O. Wilson doing in Africa’s Great Rift Valley? Stirring up controversy, of course... more» In the West, graffiti is an empty, often clichéd visual commodity. In the rest of the world, it’s the lingua franca of political revolt... more»... more» Raymond Tallis – fedora-topped medical man, polemical polymath – is keen to cure the humanities of two illnesses: neuromania and Darwinitis... more» With an existential swagger, Willem de Kooning hopped from affair to affair. Then he met Ruth Kligman: “She really put lead in my pencil”... more» Enough with the hagiography. Steve Jobs was a genius of invention, but his were not epoch-making innovations. Instant history has its perils... more» Want to hatch a dinosaur? Might be as simple as reverse-evolving a chicken. It’s just a theory. For now... more» Maurice Sendak doesn’t mince words. “Detestable” is his view of Salman Rushdie. “I called up the ayatollah – nobody knows that”...more» Something’s rotten in the Kingdom of Print. Books that call for 60 pages are fluffed out to 600. Why? The dismal economics of publishing... more» For the smug and misanthropic Ambrose Bierce, cynicism wasn’t an attitude; it was his essence... more» The hole in The Old Farmer’s Almanac made it easier to hang in an outhouse, where it served dual purposes, equally useful... more» Quantum mechanics is one of the most reliable theories in science, but that doesn’t mean physicists understand it... more» For Arthur Conan Doyle, who found “unaffectedness” his own chief virtue, the ideal of happiness was “men who do their duty.” He did his... more» In 1965, researchers set out in campers to hear Americans talk. The Dictionary of American Regional English is a road trip of the mind... more» Al Jazeera, victim of its success: Amid the Arab Spring, the network faces competition, in the Middle East and beyond... more» Right-thinking people take it for granted that, in criticizing business, American literature has saved the nation’s soul. That assumption needs revisiting... more» 5-by-8-inch cardstock, about to be thrown away: the report cards of strangers long dead. Paul Lukas delivered a precious few to where they belong... more» The fortune of Conrad Black, jailed newspaper mogul, has shrunk to $80-million. “I can live on $80-million,” says the gentleman, unbowed. “At least I think I can.”... more» Natural selection is hell on dysfunctional traits. So how did humans survive adolescence? New research on the brain offers an adaptive accounting... more» Sweat stains on the cover of your new Amazon book? Could be from a temp worker in the sweltering Lehigh Valley warehouse; paramedics know the route...more» Rah, rah, bah, humbug. College sports is a multibillion-dollar racket, says a famed historian of civil rights. It's time to pay those who do the sweating...more» Is experimental philosophy superficial, touchy-feely, faddish nonsense? That’s the rap on Joshua Knobe. He hears it. He just doesn’t care... more» Exile and identity. When Ariel Dorfman fled Chile, he left his library behind. His years of roving were shaped by the books he could not read... more» In Havana, morality is malleable. The open secret: Everyone does something illegal. To eat well, for example, call Mr. Dean & Deluca... more» Science on trial. In 2009 an earthquake destroyed the Italian city of L’Aquila, killing 300 people. Were seismologists guilty of manslaughter?... more» For the hyperactive, mildly Asperger-y Stanford computer-science crowd, coding is like cocaine. “It’s misery, misery, misery, euphoria”... more» Fashion, Kant wrote, belongs “under the heading of folly.” But men, it seems, have always been bemused by catwalk-gazing fashionistas... more» fMRI’s and free will. Imagine a neuroscientist knowing what you’ll decide before you do. Is consciousness a biochemical afterthought?... more» “I'm getting old,” says Bernard Lewis. But his memory remains sharp. Just ask him about swapping Marx Brothers films with the Shah... more» David Protess is one of the few professors whose work actually saves lives. Why was he unable to save his own career?... more» Beyond humiliation. Brought low by scandal, Conrad Black found a literary refuge in unit B-1 of a federal prison in Florida... more» Niall Ferguson: not just another pretty face. “The real point of me isn’t that I’m good looking. It’s that I’m clever”... more» Barry Duncan has built a monument to reversibility. The 400-word Greenward palindrome reads like a slightly batty prose poem... more» The fate of “forsooth.” Like other abandoned words, it is but an archaic fragment. Its history is distinguished, its future nonexistent... more» Zomia has been called the largest anarchic region in the world, stretching from Vietnam to India. But is it real?... more» Struggling through unemployment? Try Taoism. Midlife crisis? Read Nietzsche. Philosophical counselors have the cure for whatever ails you... more» India’s love for correction fluid and carbon paper endures in the computer age. “Bicycles survived cars. Why not typewriters?”... more» “One camera can’t show you that much,” says David Hockney, who prefers a multi-lens view of the world... more» “Inflation,” said Ronald Reagan, is “deadly like a hit man.” Maybe not. Is it time to stop worrying and print more money?... more» Some people want to know the future; others don’t. Some feel powerful in the face of fate. Others know that the way to escape fate is to not know it... more» Some people can’t read a book without a pencil in hand. Geoff Dyer can’t read without picking his nose. To each his own... more» Terrorist methods are widely available – a manual lists 14 “simple tools” to wage violent jihad. So why are there so few Islamist terrorists?... more» On the road. GPS means that you never have to find your own way in the world. What would Jack Kerouac think?... more» Losing heir. In his doctoral thesis, Saif Qaddafi endorsed holding war criminals personally responsible. Was he sincere? Probably not; he never was... more» Ah, the Moulin Rouge: a paragon of decadent, belle epoque entertainment. Toulouse-Lautrec saw it as a scene of poignant melancholy... more» In the 1960s, an exotic species roamed the earth: jet-set playboys. Today their pricey chivalry is gone, replaced by tweet-happy politicians... more» Freedom and democracy are incompatible, says Peter Thiel. His solution? Build a libertarian utopia off the coast of California... more» Temptation’s toll. You spend three or four hours a day resisting desire. The result: terrible decisions... more» Albert Barnes built an immaculate estate to hold his $30-billion collection of Picassos, Renoirs, Matisses. It was beautiful – and doomed... more» “When I cleared out my Moscow apartment, they found wiring in the walls,” says Mikhail Gorbachev. “They were spying on me all along”... more» Adam and Eve never existed, or so some evangelical intellectuals now believe. But if there was no original sin, what need is there for a savior?... more» Wikipedia is “intellectual mob rule,” says Jaron Lanier, who is that rare beast: a techno-guru who dislikes what technology has become... more» Strange bedfellows. The gun-rights movement aligned black radicals with the National Rifle Association against a common foe: Ronald Reagan... more» The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrific, but it didn’t force Japan’s surrender. So why did the war end?... more» In 1725, a feral boy stumbled out of the woods and posed a challenge to Europe’s secular intelligentsia: What separates man from animals?... more» By the end of the 19th century, torture was “as extinct as cannibalism.” Then it came back. What happened? Guerrilla warfare... more» On August 21, 1911, a man in a smock walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa. Some suspected Picasso; others blamed the Jews... more» Cold War Disneyland. Once a blemish, the Berlin Wall is now home to kitschy, costumed reenactments, pickle-eating contests, and Darth Vader... more» Getting old takes getting used to – loss of appetite, constant urinating – but Jerry Lewis is adjusting. “I keep my fly open all day”... more» St. Augustine’s eccentricities were said to be the result of “a mind steeped too long in too few books.” Of whom can that be said today?... more» New words for the male member: “thundertube,” “seedstick,” the “Malcolm Gladwell.” Who thinks up this stuff? Nicholson Baker... more» Does Islam stifle innovation? Meet the entrepreneurs of Anatolia. However you explain their success, Islam has not impeded it... more» The emotional life of bees. The gentle curl of their mouths, the hesitant flicks of their antennae: Are bees sentient creatures?... more» Ecological nativism. Why the fuss over non-native species? Today’s suspicious-looking foreigner might be tomorrow’s local treasure... more» Silver Spoons may be forgettable, but Ricky Schroder has made a lasting contribution to science: He can make you cry... more» Fear reigns at Punjab University, where Islamists pistol-whipped free thinkers into submission. Well, almost. The philosophers are fighting back... more» The patent war. Nathan Myhrvold is a polymath with a knack for making money. Is his latest venture a shakedown of Silicon Valley?... more» The politics of yuck. Sewage on a hot day is simply gross. Disgust, however, is actually quite complex. In fact, it’s dangerous... more» Aging and innovation. We spend billions to live longer, yet give little thought to how to live longer, better. Here comes the silver tsunami... more» In the basement of the Empire State Building, Dinesh D’Souza prepares an “A-team” of Christian intellectuals to thrive in a fallen world... more» The Code War isn’t about brandishing stockpiles of cyber weapons. It’s about big ideas and a shadowy arms dealer named Mr. Fusion... more» Lucian Freud, divisive, bleak portrait artist, old-school bohemian, wry conversationalist, is dead at 88... NYTimes... BBC... Wash Post... Telegraph... Guardian... AP... Martin Gayford... Peter Schjeldahl... Laurie Fendrich... Jerry Saltz... Forward Growing up Jong. The home decor was pornographic, and Erica’s boyfriends tended to be motorcycle-riding drug dealers. But Molly survived... more» Catch-22 puzzled critics but delighted readers, including Heller’s fledgling agent: “I thought my navel would unscrew and my ass would fall off”... more» “Let’s speak frankly,” says Slavoj Žižek. “The left hates me even though I am supposed to be one of the leading communist intellectuals”... more» A nose for history. Napoleon’s cologne, the resurrected stench of a Viking latrine: Can odor offer a sense of the past? Take a whiff... more» If Leonardo da Vinci were alive today, he might produce a cookbook like Nathan Myhrvold’s 2,400-page, 50-pound, $625 tome... more» A woman walks into a male-dominated, money-losing start-up. Now Facebook turns a billion-dollar profit. What’s the lesson?... more» On the New York art scene, the avuncular, ubiquitous Irving Sandler is Herodotus, Livy, and Thucydides rolled into one... more» Bribery is an art, and the art business in China – rife with forgeries, crooked scholars, corrupt auction houses – is brush-stroked by bribes... more» Most Americans don’t want to be Rotarians or Kiwanians; they prefer to bowl alone. But civic groups are thriving – in authoritarian countries... more» In defense of Rihanna. Pop music might be superficial, misogynist, and stupid, but it isn’t to blame for our cultural slide into self-love... more» Given real-time information about their actions, people change their own behavior. Technology makes feedback loops more effective than ever... more» |
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New BooksFeminists might be squeamish about women using sex appeal to get ahead, but erotic capital should not be squandered... more» Christopher Hitchens is the Edmund Burke of our time: two ingenious, subtle essayists whose belligerence triumphed over their judgment... more» Assassination fiction. Political murders have always stoked the irrational underside of politics. Why do we prefer pseudo-scholarship to the truth?... more» The African boom. After decades of war, disease, and plummeting living standards, the continent is on the rise. What happened?... more» Working mothers are nothing new. In hunter-gatherer societies, women brought in half of the food. So much for the myth of passive femininity... more» Marilyn and Mailer. His essay has been repackaged with photos from a final shoot. ’The pairing has the intimacy and delight of a Pap smear“... more» Economics might act like a science, but it isn’t one, says Robert Trivers. Its key ideas are naive, and it’d take more than a nudge to fix that... more» Americans read Nietzsche without becoming Nietzscheans. As for those few who go whole hog, they’re rarely intellectuals of the first rank... more» It wasn’t easy being George Kennan, a curmudgeon well before he was old. His pet peeve in high school? “The universe”... more» Though reluctant to work with the U.S. military, anthropologists have a lot to say about the war in Afghanistan. Alex Star listens... more» Alienation and misanthropy. Stephen Sondheim’s muse is misery – about success, relationships, aging, and mankind itself... more» “We are what we pretend to be,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” He heeded his own advice... more» The Book of Genesis is a bedtime soporific, not a page-turner. God, says Jonathan Rée, is the death of narrative, and narrative the death of God... more» An epidemic of biologism has gripped academe. Symptoms include the belief that the mind is the brain, and that Darwinism explains everything... more» Burning and fuming. Writing Bleak House put Dickens into a creative frenzy, with nothing to calm himself but a bucket of cold water... more» Can world history be described via precisely 100 art objects? Sure, when illumined by cultural relativism with a flicker of hypocrisy... more» Aliens and us. If those bulbous-eyed green men are so smart, why do they have to stick probes up abductees’ butts to see what we’re made of?... more» Like the cocktail was to the Jazz Age, the microbrew is the drink for our precarious times. Even the oenophilic Italians have discovered the romance of beer... more» Martin Amis broke with his biographer. The salacious revelations? Nope. It’s the book’s shockingly bad prose that Amis can’t stand... more» Stephen Hawking included just one equation in A Brief History of Time. Others followed suit. But can physics be explained without math?... more» A life in letters. When the day was done, P.G. Wodehouse returned to his chief pleasure: “writing stinkers to people who attack me”... more» The university is broken. Students learn little and take on big debt to pay for an education that, intellectually, doesn’t amount to much... more» Nietzsche-mania. From Lionel Trilling to Huey Newton: What is it about this anti-Christian, antidemocratic madman that appeals to Americans?... more» In private, Samuel Beckett was as you might imagine him: sullenly professing distaste for his own work, too fatigued to do anything new... more» Michel Houellebecq – nihilist, alleged racist – is a first-rate prose stylist and a practiced provocateur. That doesn’t mean he’s a good novelist... more» Hitler, Stalin, Mao – three reasons to question moral progress. But has cynicism blinded us to a worldwide decline in belligerency?... more» Politics of personality. How to explain William F. Buckley? He had ideas, of course – 50-some books. But what mattered was his charm... more» The revolutionary who loved birds. Rosa Luxemburg’s passion for animals was resolutely cheerful and gentle. Even cloying... more» In studying William Carlos Williams, it was best to avoid his son. “If you’re a bloodhound come to sniff out my father’s affairs”... more» To be human is to think recursively. But what if apes and dogs think recursively, too? Time to reconsider what it means to be human... more» So you want to be a famous economist? Repackage an old idea as a bold new insight. It works for Robert Frank... more» All religions have bloodstained garments, but Scientology has more blood on fewer garments, more pints per believer... more» Samuel Beckett wasn’t much for navel-gazing or self-promotion. “I do not know who Godot is. I do not know if he exists”... more» A night at the Nietzsches’. Harry Kessler – dandified German count, family friend – barely slept. Friedrich, mad and sick, cried all night... more» Imagine that Trotsky, not Stalin, had succeeded Lenin. Russia would have been spared decades of terror, right? Probably not... more» Brutality and blazing sun: No greater poem than the Iliad. It shocks still – a spear through the bladder! But really, four new translations?... more» Hunter S. Thompson. Look beneath the lore and legacy-buffing to watch a writer developing and deteriorating in real time... more» “Listen, you miserable bitch.” Hollywood didn’t appreciate Pauline Kael’s contrarianism. She couldn’t have cared less... more» Ben Jonson, Britain’s first literary celebrity, was a bruiser, intellectually and physically. It surprised no one that he stabbed a man to death... more» He blogs! He tweets! He consults! Jeff Jarvis has a way of turning trivial observations into buzzy business maxims... more» Spalding Gray, who called himself a “connoisseur of ambivalence,” was certain about this: He was a fraud, life was rotten, he should end it... more» In the creation of Maus, everything mattered. Were there tufts of grass in Auschwitz? Ruts in the path? Puddles in the ruts?... more» Behold a scholar of repute, writing on a subject in which he has long been immersed, suddenly out of his depth, awash in psychobabble... more» Alexander the Great: Hero or tyrant? Neither, says Mary Beard. The king of Macedon was merely a “drunken juvenile thug”... more» In public, Jackie Kennedy was wooden, wide-eyed, carefully staged. Does that explain why she spoke like a child? Not quite... more» Politics and principles. When it comes to staying in power, democrats and dictators have more in common than not... more» John Milton would appreciate today’s personal ads: seekers in meticulous revolt, like Satan, against the reality imposed on them... more» Evolutionary psychology is mere speculation, says John Gray. Consider, for example, the notion that humans have become less violent... more» Alfred Kazin, neurotic and bitter, lived in a perpetual state of high anxiety: “My craving for fame, prestige, ‘love’ seems uncontrolled”... more» Epicureanism is not about heedless hedonism, says Stephen Greenblatt. Rather, it is an antidote to the allure of limitless power... more» Joseph Schumpeter wanted to be the greatest horseman, lover, and economist of his era. Alas, he had time to accomplish only two of the three... more» The great illumination. Streetlights changed everything, a fact not lost on those who prefer the dark: thieves, prostitutes, drunks, students... more» Google wants to know your reading habits, taste in music, and where you are right now. You are not Google’s customer. You are its product... more» An affectionate if troublesome son, Ezra Pound wrote to his parents almost every day, often more than once. How did he afford the postage?... more» Hemingway’s later years: Ill health, night terrors. “Forgive him anything,” said a friend. “He writes like an angel”... more» The British took umbrage at the Qing dynasty for blocking their opium shipments. A fleet was dispatched. Thus was China “opened” to Western trade... more» David Mamet, Hollywood conservative. Why bother with his welter of invective and pseudo-sophistication when you can go read Friedrich von Hayek? ... more» Can’t talk or eat or drink, can’t walk or even stand easily. Roger Ebert, scrubbed of self-pity, is sustained by love, movies, and all those memories... more» The facts of H. G. Wells’s life – imaginative author, social thinker, lover (100 women, he guessed) – are rich enough to constitute a novel. And so they have... more» Thomas L. Friedman’s optimism is terrifying, writes Andrew Ferguson. And his language? Pointless alliteration + runaway metaphor = Friedmanism... more» Freakish expectations. The economics of high-fashion modeling dictate that most models starve not by choice, but by necessity... more» The Harold Bloom Show. The plot: Celebrity, solipsism, and megalomaniacal excess transform a brilliant critic into a hollow sham... more» Pity Jenny Marx. Her husband, Karl, was arrogant and underemployed. His drinking jags sometimes led to infidelity, or violence... more» Christopher Lasch’s distaste for the self-regard of intellectuals bewildered his peers. He found their bewilderment reassuring... more» Twitter, Facebook, and Google filter the world to flatter your preconceptions. Is intellectual cocooning the end of democracy?... more» The percentage of black and white adults using drugs is the same, but blacks are nine times more likely to go to jail for drug crimes. Why?... more» Sex, that voyage of discovery for generation after generation. But Ariel Levy has a reality check: You’re not a Cortez of coition... more» From seamstress to mistress to magnate, Coco Chanel never kept her little black dress on for very long... more» Gustav Mahler was no austere perfectionist. His music contains multitudes. “The symphony must be like the world. It must be all-embracing”... more» T.S. Eliot was one of the world’s unhappiest people. His life was a nightmare of anxiety. But misery stirred creativity... more» Dwight Macdonald, a naysayer by nature, was irascible but logical. Asked why he drank so much, he replied, “I'm an alcoholic, goddamit!”... more» Christopher Hitchens’s secular moralism transcends left and right. He is a lodestar of candor in an age of double talk... more» Jane Austen produced frivolous “feminine tosh,” says V.S. Naipaul. But the key to understanding Austen is not her gender, but her genius... more» Is Gary Taubes a scientific Solzhenitsyn, bravely exposing the nutrition establishment? Or is he peddling his own bunk health advice?... more» Chet Baker had a pure sound and matinee-idol looks. Then heroin took over. The trumpeter’s self-degradation, says Greil Marcus, is irresistible... more» Self-control is the best predictor of a successful life. To prevent that next lapse of will, take Steven Pinker’s advice: Eat chocolate... more» Conservatives, fearful of lowering standards, have long been wary of efforts to democratize higher education. Now liberals are following suit... more» Mass-produced images cheapen what they portray. You doubt that? Consider pornography and the corruption of desire... more» On April 30, 1945, Eva Braun bit into a cyanide capsule. She died as she had lived, invisible to the world... more» Wendy Wasserstein used intimacy as a smoke screen, and, to the dismay of friends, her life – and theirs – as source material... more» What ails American literature? English departments, says Joseph Epstein, have become intellectual nursing homes, where old ideas go to die... more» Hitler humor. The ubiquity of anti-Nazi jokes in wartime Germany suggests that instead of acting against Hitler, most critics just laughed at him... more» Hugh Trevor-Roper was many things – social climber, political intriguer, intellectual bomb thrower – and in none of them was he ever boring... more» Alfred Kazin found that “absolute frankness is the only originality.” But his frankness ends not in originality but in creepy revelations... more» For Rimbaud, precocity yielded an iconoclastic burst of creativity. Then he abandoned poetry. He was 20, there was nothing left to say... more» It is academic snobbery to search for Orientalism in the canon of high literature, but not pulp novels or Hollywood films... more» Young women have at least one asset, erotic capital, but it’s undervalued – by society and by women themselves. There is a remedy: prostitution... more» The idea of universal human rights has been a profound contribution to civilization. More than a little credit goes to the slave rebels of Haiti... more» Henry Luce and the intellectuals. Journalism and the life of the mind merged in the profit-motivated pages of Time, Life, and Fortune... more» Tim Wu has an influential theory about the future of information. The problem: He’s wrong, even incoherent. Paul Starr explains... more» “To be, or not to be” is not original to Shakespeare. In effect, Hamlet is quoting, not thinking. All language carries baggage... more» Humphrey Bogart’s face – indelible and engaging, but hardly beautiful – confounded a co-star. “How can a man so ugly be so handsome?”... more» Famine, flood, and slipshod currency reform have failed to end Kim Jong Il’s reign. But now there’s a new challenge: bootleg copies of Titanic... more» The mind has always been forgetful, lapsing into oblivion. But has this ever been more true than now, when we know so much and remember so little?... more» Alfred Kazin’s love of literature was matched only by his love of himself. Self-absorption, to many women, proved irresistible... more» Agnes de Mille democratized ballet, injecting a dose of pop-art cheekiness into the ordered, insidery world of formal dance... more» V.S. Naipaul among the natives. How to explain his passion for foreign places and peoples? Curiosity and racist snobbery... more» Vodka – no color, no taste – made no sense to A.J. Liebling, a brown-spirits man. He had a point: It’s the chicken breast of libations... more» In 1915, as Edward Thomas prepared to flee the war in Europe, a poem arrived from his friend Robert Frost. “The Road Not Taken” changed everything... more» For the swaggering titans of mid-20th-century literature, violence was their muse. Then Joseph Heller dismantled their greatest subject... more» Back-of-the-envelope calculation: Over the past 10,000 years, humans have created 10,000 religions and 1,000 gods. Why?... more» In 1932, William Shirer, a reporter in Paris, was abruptly fired from his job at the Chicago Tribune. On a whim, he took off for Berlin... more» Brandishing scads of data, Robert Pape argues that suicide terrorism is not motivated by Islam. But what’s motivating Pape?... more» The public palate. Wines today are presented like photographs in lad mags: Attributes enhanced and airbrushed to satisfy a commercial ideal... more» Reading David Foster Wallace is like being trapped in a room with a hyperarticulate obsessive-compulsive. Irksome, but brilliant... more» Is Google evil? Probably not. But it is trying to read your mind. On the upside, it’s saving you keystrokes... more» Knotted: How the Necktie Changed the World. Yeah, sure. The plague of publishing these days is to mistake ubiquity for significance... more» Giro d’Italia, 1956. Fiorenzo Magni fell, broke his collarbone and arm, kept pedaling – and finished second. To think: He wasn't even doping... more» Umberto Eco is fascinated by fallibility. His vast personal library includes the works of the errant Ptolemy, not the accurate Galileo... more» Ladies loved Franz Liszt. The virtuosic composer and cad was the Mick Jagger of his day, trysting his way from Coventry to Kiev... more» Mark Lynas once hurled a pie at Bjorn Lomborg, saying: “That’s for lying about climate change.” Now he’s targeting fellow environmentalists... more» Viagra in the agora. The little blue pill gives rise to enduring philosophical insights. But if they linger for more than four hours, consult a doctor... more» Beware of benevolence. History’s world improvers have been indifferent to actual human suffering, and quite willing to kill with kindness... more» | |
Essays and OpinionPhilosophy and faith. Baghdad was the intellectual center of the early medieval world. Then free inquiry faded in Muslim countries. Why?... more» Animals have long formed a contrast to everything we aspire to be. They are hairy brutes; we are enlightened creatures ashamed of thinking of them as our kin... more» In the 1970s, alternative magazines published a trove of rock criticism. Robert Christgau remembers the democratic babble of that brief era... more» Taking aim at middle-class aspirations, Dwight Macdonald drew a bazooka when a pistol would do. He didn’t open the conversation, he killed it... more» Money and art. The two can’t be disentangled. But some entanglements are more troubling than others. Culture is in retreat before the brute dollar. Jed Perl explains.. more» The merchandising of Milosz. Pens, postcards, T-shirts, even biscotti – few poets have been commodified and branded with such rock-star exuberance... more» Jackie Kennedy, a name synonymous with style and class. What a surprise, then, that her first instinct was for the popular, the kitsch, the second-rate... more» The neuroeconomic revolution. Neuroscience is changing the way Robert Shiller thinks about economics. Do prevailing theories have a physical basis in the brain?... more» George Harrison had two personalities: self-effacing spiritual seeker and cocaine-addled adulterer. The latter made him a cliché, the former made him the most unlikely rock star... more» Thanks to the Internet, everyone has a say, everyone is a cultural arbiter. A golden age of criticism? Nonsense. The Web has made criticism obsolete... more» Education greases social mobility and cures social ills. College levels the playing field. Not true, says Steven Brint, but sure is nice to think so... more» When semiotics was king. No longer hip and transgressive, theory-heads came to the realization: Not everything that seems worthy of literary study is literature... more» Solipsism and lust. Philip Roth has always been his own preoccupation. In novel after novel, he floats lofty, universal ideas, and then unzips his fly... more» Erudite, farsighted, fearless: The accolades continue to be piled on Tony Judt. But his talent as a polemicist and pamphleteer disqualified him as a historian of ideas... more» Once the epitome of glamour, fur has fallen on hard times. The mink coat has come to signify hussies on the make or the kept woman... more» Triumphal delirium. Despite the trappings of social science and academic prose, Francis Fukuyama’s belief in progress is nothing more than a statement of faith. John Gray explains... more» For the teenage Geoff Dyer, Penguin Modern Classics did not have the subversive allure of drugs, but consuming them was an expression of independence and discovery... more» “I was born for greatness,” Oprah has said. She was born, in fact, as poor as a child can be in America. So how did she build her empire? Being a kooky megalomaniac helped... more» Jonathan Lethem regarded James Wood as the most gifted and consequential critic of our time. Then Wood reviewed one of Lethem’s novels. “The letdown startled me”... more» Social science is wrong: Crowds are not violent forces that submerge individuality and destroy rationality. In fact, they bring out the best in people... more» Chicken Sexers and Plane Spotters. There’s a gap between awareness and knowledge, and some skills can be mastered only by your unconscious... more» Everything is suddenly a distraction to William Ian Miller. His brain is “balsa wood floating in a helium sea.” In truth, his brain is shrinking. And so is yours... more» Jung understood the need to believe – in religion, mysticism, even in quasi-Nazi flimflam. He wanted to be a prophet but couldn’t shake his faith in science... more» Isaac Deutscher mistook an adolescent dream for reality-based politics. Just the picture of the intellectual who knows so much but understands so little... more» What makes a good prophet? Showmanship and luck, but also a taste for secrecy and controversy. Most of all, be a blank slate: People see what they want to see... more» Tolstoy of the nursery. The Alice books have been interpreted to death: an allegory of Darwinism, a tale of toilet training, a story of sexual desire. All miss the point... more» Gertrude Stein – foreigner, lesbian, Jew – survived World War II in France. How? She knew a dapper, Harvard-educated aesthete with an obscurely punctuated last name... more» Holding out for emotional fulfillment is all very well, but lots of women are still single, and it’s getting late. Blame Gloria Steinem, men, monogamy, and, of course, Mom... more» Swaggering and despairing. Niall Ferguson speaks to men of a certain class and education, from the Upper East Side to the West End. Pankaj Mishra explains... more» For Philip Larkin, letters were a crucible in which to refine his poetry. They were also the venue for airing regrets. “I’m sorry that our lovemaking fizzled out”... more» Politics between the sheets. Revolutionaries must be monomaniacal, it’s said. But what is a revolution without sex? Without art? A failure, argued Emma Goldman... more» In our secular world, relics of the dead still are hallowed. Care to mix your loved one’s ashes into an oil painting, suitable for framing?... more» Aphrodite, goddess of...looting. Consider the journey of one classical statue, hidden in loose carrots, from Italy to Los Angeles and back... more» “We live in a world where information is potentially unlimited,” says George Dyson. “Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning?”... more» Take a clear-eyed look at the book biz. Only two major players, Amazon and Google, are still standing. Everyone else is looking for the best way to go bankrupt... more» What’s worse: A fatwa sentencing you to death or being asked thousands of times what it’s like to be sentenced to death? “It’s pretty close,” says Salman Rushdie... more» Hinduism’s classic texts are suffused with sexual pleasure. But a combative prudishness is on the rise in India. Martha Nussbaum wonders why... more» Literary fiction is not a standard to aspire to, says Geoff Dyer. It’s merely a convention that writers and readers collapse into, like an old sofa... more» The 19th-century social network. To enjoy the crowd, Baudelaire told us, one must have masks. His love of observing was at war with his fear of being seen... more» Would you like a planet with old-growth forests, a living ocean, and no extreme climate change? Of course. Only technology can make such a world possible... more» “Hey, babe, fancy a shag?” Drink doesn’t make us amorous and uninhibited. Culture does. So next time you wake up with regrets, blame not the booze, but yourself... more» In an age of recklessness and complacency, the future of finance belongs to the prosthetic gods of mathematics and supercomputers. What shall we risk today?... more» For a century, says Will Self, the symphony and the novel made beautiful love. Then the novel lost interest. Now it just lies there, summoning up past pleasures while playing with itself... more» No more Manhattan Projects. Technological innovation has stalled, says Peter Thiel. Scientists are ignored. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mailroom... more» Is Terry Eagleton a credulous dupe for believing that democracy and the Holocaust are two sides of the same capitalist coin?... more» Was he or wasn’t he? Neoconservatives wrap themselves in the mantle of Lionel Trilling. But for a thinker of his subtlety, such labels are irrelevant... more» Is evil free-willed wickedness? Or are evildoers compelled to act as they do, victims of an errant electrochemical impulse, an anomaly in the amygdala?... more» Sure, Norman Mailer was preposterous. But let’s give the man his due: He was a centrifuge of sentences, a spinner of narrative fragments. Jonathan Lethem explains... more» Adam Smith’s invisible hand is stayed by the inexorable force of Darwinian selection. How can this be? Consider the woodworker and the table saw... more» The Anti-Romantic child. Every morning another word was gone, another moment of eye contact lost. At stake is not Amy Leal’s job as a scholar, but her son’s life...... more» W.G. Sebald the novelist exposed Germany’s culture of silence about its Nazi past. Sebald the professor took aim at the deterioration of academic culture... more» The demand for certainty is the innovation-killer of our age. Solve big problems, build big stuff? No. Don’t risk failure... more» Has Jürgen Habermas – gasp! – found God? The neo-Marxist philosopher who once viewed religion as an alienating reality now credits Christianity with spreading egalitarianism... more» Murder, rape, torture – a typical day during the Middle Ages. The world today, by comparison, is Edenic. Has human nature changed? Steven Pinker explains the humanitarian revolution... more» “You need a baby,” he told his 47-year-old lover. Thirteen years later, their two children are growing up. Anyone have a problem with that?... more» Webster’s Third was hardly the radical manifesto it was made out to be; its three main sources were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Milton. In dictionaries nowadays, every “wassup” is welcome... more» Carl Oglesby’s singular voice – Midwestern, idealistic, in love with and anguished by America – helped inspire the New Left. Until the cocky revolutionists said he had “bad politics.”... more» Persuasive though the rationales for atheism may be, the idea of God is still a reminder that as clever as you are, there will always be a lot of things you do not understand... more» George W. Bush looks great. Two-plus years as a civilian have been good to him. Plenty of time to read now (fascinated by Genghis Khan). Decided he was going to get better at golf... more» Boxing, once central to American history, has sunk to sideshow and, even lower, to a metaphor for politicians. Now a heroic figure from the Philippines trails auguries of glory into the ring... more» Why do we exist? asks Richard Dawkins. Why are we here? For the 70-year-old biologist, a compelling answer: to continue deft battle with intolerably conventional wisdom... more» Meet Clyde, Joseph, and Leon. Each believes that he is Jesus. Brought together in one room, the three Christs reveal that sometimes psychosis is as good as it gets... more» John Holdeen took the long view. In 1936, he placed $2.8-million into a series of 1,000-year trusts. Will the compound interest shatter the U.S.economy?... more» The morality of refusal. Catch-22’s explosively cynical, disillusioned take on military valor remains relevant. Morris Dickstein explains... more» Behold the patchwriter, who recycles, steals, appropriates other people’s words to construct something new. Welcome to the age of unoriginal genius... more» “The Islamists come out of modern intellectual settings, out of universities and libraries,” says Paul Berman. “Everyone can argue with them.” And everyone can argue with Berman... more» Ours is a culture of whateverness: Disbelief trumps belief; opinions, buildings, behavior are trivial curiosities. Enthralled by ephemera, we’ve become idea surfers... more» The Loeb Classical Library – 518 volumes covering 1,400 years of Greek and Latin literature – is among the greatest accomplishments of modern scholarship... more» Evil and us. Sloppy historical analogies, amateurish psychological speculations, oversimplifications, tired moral platitudes – we’ve gotten evil all wrong... more» When it comes to political judgment, Günter Grass has shown that he hasn’t any. So why does Germany’s cultural elite persist in believing that he does?... more» Revolution is the triumph of hope over experience, says Avishai Margalit. Any cause for hope should be celebrated. In Egypt, there is still reason to celebrate... more» It’s the first day of college, but before Mark Edmundson welcomes the freshman class, he has a question: What are you doing here?... more» Marx was wrong: Capitalism, not communism, killed the bourgeoisie. Now there’s no escaping the mercurial market forces. Prepare for further upheaval... more» In 1967, Noam Chomsky accused intellectuals of deceit and distortion for rationalizing American militarism. Four decades later, little has changed... more» Literature and the mind. Novelists are thought to be uniquely perceptive about human nature, but does reading fiction increase knowledge? Clarify emotions? Deepen sympathy?... more» Nabokov was fascinated by extreme characters: pedophiles, murderers, megalomaniacs. He depicted and appealed to psychology. For insight, psychology should look to him... more» Arendt in Jerusalem. The trial of Eichmann, she thought, failed to take the measure of the man and his deeds. That failure, perhaps, was her own... more» Learn. Unlearn. Relearn. The Internet makes it hard to concentrate. Good, says Cathy Davidson. Disruption and distraction spark innovation and creativity... more» The power of ideas. Material factors can’t explain 9/11 or the Arab Spring. To understand those events, says Paul Berman, study the influence of intellectuals... more» Militant atheism offers a simplistic reading of religious belief, says James Wood. In reality, our beliefs fluctuate. We are all flip-floppers... more» Early computer culture was a battle between gray, regimented corporations and psychedelic hippie-nerds. It’s still not clear who won... more» “I like walking because it is slow, and the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour,” says Rebecca Solnit. “Modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness”... more» Literary studies: esoteric, politicized, and out of touch with reality, says Scott Herring. Let the dead French theorists lie, and the field will come back to life... more» Philip Larkin is a novelist’s poet. It’s novelists, like Martin Amis, who revere his inimitable skill as a scene-setting phrasemaker... more» For David Hume, conversation – the exchange of ideas, the free play of wit – contributed to “an increase of humanity.” But conversation is one thing; online chat is another... more» Jean Sibelius’s music – slow, simple, beautiful – was lionized between the world wars. The backlash was as predictable as it was misguided... more» War, recession, the recent riots in Britain: Is there anything bad in the world that “neoliberalism” is not blamed for? Brendan O’Neill wonders... more» Robert Johnson never denied that he’d cut a deal with the devil: his soul for his guitar chops. The bluesman knew that scandal sells... more» Jews playing Wagner. It happens, though not much in Israel, where the Nazis’ favorite composer is unofficially banned. But music has many anti-Semites – why single out Wagner?... more» Postmodernism is dead. But before throwing a shovelful of dirt on this dominant idea – or clever sham? – a question: What the hell was that about?... more» Genocide, terrorism, insurgencies: The world feels like an ever more violent place. It isn’t. In fact, war is on the wane. And where it still occurs, it’s less brutal... more» Think of Winston Churchill, what comes to mind? Jowly war hero, stirring orator, acidic wit. How about father of the British welfare state?... more» Charles Taylor routinely raises provocative questions – and routinely fails to answer them. More interested in foreplay than climax, he is a master of the philosopher’s tease... more» Anders Behring Breivik represents more than his own act of violence. His is a new creed of right-wing extremism, a Christian version of al-Qaeda. Malise Ruthven explains... more» Michael Ignatieff ditched Harvard for Canadian politics, insisting that philosophers can transform themselves into kings. Canadians begged to differ... more» Women and wages. Fewer hours at an undemanding job for reduced pay: Welcome to the mommy track. Far from an unjust, patriarchal imposition, it’s where many women want to be... more» Secularism is an achievement, but is it also a predicament? Are nonbelievers condemned to lead desperate lives devoid of meaning? James Wood wonders... more» Death, fear, evil, enemies, justice, courage, patriotism, resilience – what did those things mean on September 11, 2001? What do they mean today?... more» About modern intellectual history, Irving Kristol knew at least this: Big-impact ideas tend to come from small, intently focused groups... more» “Our culture is afflicted with knowingness,” says Erik Davis. But what we know are other peoples’ opinions. Yelp, Digg, Twitter, Facebook...Make up your own damn mind!... more» Ted Hughes, it was said, went through women “like a guy harvesting corn.” Thus Sylvia Plath, the martyred saint of wronged wives. Sounds plausible, but... more» You know the type: abstemious, compulsive exercise, supplements by the fistful. Mark Edmundson is not one of those people. In fact, he loathes them... more» He was among the greatest talkers of his – or any – time, but Oscar Wilde meticulously revised his written prose, never quite sure how subversive he wanted to be... more» Founded in 1857 to advance the “American idea,” The Atlantic Monthly was an odd intellectual home for Henry James, a peripatetic expat who renounced his U.S. citizenship... more» After crunching two billion words of 21st-century literature, Orin Hargraves arrived at an inescapable conclusion: fictional characters can’t stop playing with their hair... more» The agony of originality. Four thousand years ago, an Egyptian writer lamented his stale prose: “Would I had phrases that are not known.” If he was late to the party, what about us?... more» Step aside, Dale Peck. When it comes to sheer brutishness, no book critic compares to John Wilson Croker, who wrote the review that killed John Keats... more» The Teflon icon. An apologist for slavery who fought to destroy the United States becomes an American hero. How did it happen?... more» For conservatives considering grad school, it’s time to reconsider. Why invest so many years and dollars in the thin hope that you’ll be hired by people who loathe your views?... more» After being paralyzed by a tumor, Reynolds Price told friends he was tired of discussing his health. He wanted to talk about something else: sex... more» “I will argue that...” Oh, get on with it! Announcing your intentions might be scholarly convention, but it’s long since become an irritating tic. Geoff Dyer explains... more» At the fertility clinic, no one has sympathy for the man who can’t produce. All he’s left with is a sore arm, a sense of failure, and the ghost of an unconceived child... more» Marshall McLuhan made assertions, not arguments. Most of them unintelligible, if not wrong. It’s tempting to label him a huckster and move on. But that would be a mistake... more» The politics of self-immolation. Mohamed Bouazizi, Thích Quảng Đức, Jan Palach: Their willingness to die offers a repulsive and fascinating lesson in how to live... more» Adventures in fandom. Opera is too often dismissed as out of touch, an elitist obsession of the wealthy. It’s that, of course, and so much more... more» The old cliché is true: One person’s trash may be another person’s treasure. But let’s be serious: Thomas Kinkade’s cloying, dew-kissed paintings are, quite unambiguously, trash... more» So you want to write a book. It will be a lonely, frustrating slog. Maybe a few thousand people will read it, on its way to the remainder shelf. Why bother?... more» If writing makes you a miserable wretch, and reading capaciously hasn’t been a source of moral uplift, you’re hardly alone. The literary life tends to arouse dissatisfaction and antisocial behavior... more» The Internet’s early cheerleaders – anti-Hobbesian, hippie utopians, mostly – envisioned cyberspace as an unregulated public square. It’s more like a private mall... more» Some guys just don’t know when to shut up. Consider the chronically garrulous Tony Kushner and his tendency to drown his characters in a sea of verbiage... more» Melancholic, tormented, debauched, or otherwise awry, our poets must be lunatics, we insist. The results are both sensational and boring... more» “I have a daughter who will one day take drugs,” says Sam Harris. “Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that she chooses her drugs wisely”... more» Good restaurant, table for one at dinner. Pathetic? No, it’s a treat. As a frequent lone diner notes: “How often do I see couples not speak to each other for an entire meal?”... more» Ah, time for the writer to start writing. But wait: Are my pens facing north? What’s that funny noise? My fingernails need cutting. Do I have a toothache? Will I have a toothache?... more» The sudden closing of Yale’s program for the study of anti-Semitism raises the question: Where does scholarship end and advocacy begin?... more» The voracious scavenging of vultures has long helped prevent the spread of disease in India. But at the carcass dump on the outskirts of Bikaner, the sky is empty... more» Pity today’s elite twenty-somethings. Their loving parents pumped them full of enough self-esteem to ripen them into fragile, narcissistic wrecks ... more» Arsenic and oatmeal. Until the mid-1800s, there was no such thing as a toxicology report. It was a golden age of domestic murder... more» At least since Athens clashed with Sparta, the relationship between ascendant nations and dominant powers has been marked by war. Why would China’s rise be any different?... more» The problem with vaginas is that awful things happen to them, says Caitlin Moran. “Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get ‘examined.’ Evidence is found in them. Serial killers leave things in them”... more» The symphony orchestra was once central to the intellectual life of a city. No more, and too bad: The concert hall is a refuge in our age of distracted, self-destroying restlessness... more» |
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