Books & Fiction
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Philip Larkin and Me: A Friendship with Holes in It
When I first clapped eyes on him—owl-faced, balding, much taller than I'd expected—I was twenty-three and suddenly as uncertain as I had been as a schoolboy.
The Latest
The Creepiest Children’s Book
Why the 1957 cult classic “The Lonely Doll” still haunts the imaginations of a generation of women artists, from Kim Gordon to Cindy Sherman.
Ben Marcus on How to Honor a Catastrophe
The author discusses “Blueprints for St. Louis,” his short story in this week’s issue of the magazine.
A History of My Mexico City Home, in Earthquakes
Living on the Plaza Río de Janeiro, I experienced for the first time what it is to be house-proud. But pride blinds you to flaws.
Fiction & Poetry
Spotlight
The Austere Fiction of Fleur Jaeggy
Her work sees little point in exploring happiness, productivity, or self-understanding. Her focus is the void.
A Novelist’s Powerful Response to the Refugee Crisis
In Jenny Erpenbeck’s masterly “Go, Went, Gone,” a retired academic befriends asylum-seekers in Berlin.
Notes on a Lifetime of Passing
Thanks to my parents transplanting me often from one ethnic mix to another, I’ve become something of a code-switching connoisseur.
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Literary Lives
Visible Man
While the literary world awaited a second novel from Ralph Ellison, his early work became the forefront of black intellectual debate.