When music went minimalist. Boos echoed around Carnegie Hall; patrons headed for the exits; a woman banged her shoe on the stage, imploring the musicians to stop... more »
Life with Doris Lessing. An author attempts to enact her radical concept of freedom. But can a life so liberated regain a conventional shape?... more »
The poet Joan Murray died at 24. Her manuscripts, sent to be preserved, apparently fell off the back of a truck. Is it fair, then, to call her a minor poet?... more »
Galileo’s invention of the telescope not only broke with the church but upset philosophers as well. “To observe through those glasses gives me a headache,” said one professor... more »
What happens to anthropology when its fundamental divisions are undone — when magic and reason, and “primitive” and “modern,” no longer organize the field?... more »
When fiction fuels the future. Sun-powered screens, electric weather, telepathy via battery — by picturing what’s to come, does science fiction help us invent it?... more »
Joanna Russ isn't much remembered in the annals of science fiction, nor women’s writing, and certainly not American literature. But her influence is felt all the same... more »
The world’s least orthodox literary salon: a fascist lecturing to literary titans in an asylum. Ezra Pound’s visitors, the “Ezrologists,” pioneered the tale of the “bughouse” visit... more »
Hyper-liberalism is the academy's legitimating ideology, says John Gray. "The result is a richly entertaining mixture of bourgeois careerism with virtue-signaling self-righteousness"... more »
The surprisingly successful addict. During her battle with alcohol, Leslie Jamison got prestigious degrees, sold a novel, and took the world by storm... more »
Baffled cows, depressed does, and conniving roosters. Science paints an ever-fuller picture of the inner lives of animals. But are we any closer to understanding their minds?... more »
Our old photos follow us online, and it’s become increasingly difficult to achieve distance from the past. That’s changed our politics and, perhaps, our thinking... more »
Ian Buruma as a young man: From 1975 to 1981 he lived in Japan, appearing in whiskey ads and on stage wearing only a scarlet jockstrap... more »
Fatalism is a permanent temptation of politics. Optimistic fatalism competes with the pessimistic variety. Democracy requires finding a way between them... more »
For James Wood, the novel is “the slayer of religions.” Rationalist writers like Ian McEwan agree — they want their craft to be more scientific, less spiritual. Is it?... more »
Nautilus has asked scientists what they would be if they weren’t scientists. The most popular response: Filmmaker. How to explain this interest?... more »
Don't underestimate the power of an impertinent question. That’s what drove Oriana Fallaci, whose interview subjects usually regretted giving her the time. “Being a journalist means being disobedient”... more »
In Shakespeare's time, there were no directors. Plays were performed without scenery, on open stages. It's still something of a mystery what directors do... more »
When artists had jobs. Philip Glass was a plumber; James Dickey, a sloganeer for Coca-Cola. Day jobs provided artists with space for stray thoughts. Can they still?... more »
Each generation of historians conveys the Jewish past in a way that's bound up with its vision of the Jewish future. Those visions generally turn out to be wrong... more »
When did the sum total of a college’s intellectual value become reducible to its willingness to host controversial speakers?... more »
Reading Crime and Punishment today, we are reminded of the need to take willful self-destruction seriously. There is no rationale to human behavior... more »
Is criticism influential? If so, is that influence beneficial or malign? The first answer is yes. The second answer is complicated... more »
Communing with art won’t make you money, burn calories, or help you network. It may, writes Claire Messud, help you find joy in the superfluous and glory in each day... more »
The mysterious Cormac McCarthy. He’s intensely private about interviews and public appearances. But why, at 83, has he ventured into nonfiction?... more »
“The two ways," Kierkegaard wrote. "One is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of the fact that another suffered.” But few suffered as much as the woman who loved him... more »
Science is thought to be cold and clinical, art warm and encouraging of wonder. The drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal reveal that divide for what it is: nonsense... more »
Profanity was long considered low and dirty, the opposite of the sublime. Then came Philip Larkin, Eileen Myles, and the rise of poetic profanity... more »
Many of our best theories are not true in a strict sense, but rather are idealizations. Such concepts, useful in everyday life, are intellectually dangerous... more »
"I am sick to death of hearing about Karl Marx. I am sick of his name, his -isms, his undoubted genius, and his 'philosophy.' Most of all, I am sick of his 'relevance'"... more »
In the room where Mailer and Talese and Capote got drunk, about a dozen people — mostly women — vie to become the next editor of The Paris Review ... more »
We used to know what people meant when they spoke about someone’s "reputation." Now it's supposedly an elusive concept... more »
Workers get more education; their productivity and income go up. A nation gets more education; its productivity and income go up. Hogwash, says Bryan Caplan... more »
Ivan Ilyin, an apologist for political violence, wrote 40 books. His aim was to advance a moral justification for totalitarianism. It's working... more »
The notion that history consists of a single grand narrative is almost universally regarded as a comforting myth. But not to Marcel Gauchet ... more »
A crisis stalks the modern world: the hunt for manliness. It began in the 19th century and continues to contaminate politics and culture... more »
The lofty verb "curate" has been adopted eagerly, even anxiously, in a vain attempt to sprinkle fairy dust over something quite ordinary... more »
The bloodiest genre: books by dictators. Mao's Little Red Book,, Gaddafi’s Green Book, Saddam Hussein’s Get Out, You Damned One! ... more »
Whatever happened to alienation? It was once considered central to modern life, the stuff of Sartre, Camus, and Salinger. Now it seems to have vanished... more »
If only he’d been a lawyer. Samuel Johnson was too poor to afford legal studies — instead he did hack writing and signed a letter “Impransus”— the supperless one... more »
Eugene Genovese found much to admire in the culture of the slaveholding Southern planter class. It's a view shared by few, if any, historians today... more »
Was Eve “seduced” by the serpent? The question is familiar for being so ancient. Anne Enright has an answer: No... more »
Alain Locke, dean of the Harlem Renaissance, believed in the “ethics of beauty itself.” But the creation of art, he knew, has political consequences... more »
Darwin had eczema, so he grew a beard; Dickens hid his receding chin. Then there was the matter of George Eliot’s hands... more »
Academic satire has gone the way of the theory-brandishing rock stars it once lampooned. Academics aren't laughing anymore; they're despondent... more »
Leo Stein was dogmatic, pompous, even a bit deranged, and essential. The professional dilettante's backing came at a crucial time for modernism... more »
As a nurse during the Civil War, Walt Whitman met thousands of wounded soldiers. He confronted the sheer physicality of death: The soul may move on, but the body remains... more »
Idleness, Virginia Woolf thought, could be both strenuous and catatonic. The Bloomsbury Group was lazy, and proud of it — they were theorists (and practitioners) of leisure... more »
Quotable Einstein. He's remembered for musing on education, intelligence, politics, religion, marriage, money, and music-making. How much of it is apocryphal?... more »
Writers and their mothers. Is there any hope for a broken heart? Eva Larkin asked her son, Philip. He was the best-qualified person to answer, or the worst... more »
We hear a lot about "the future of work." The future of leisure? Not so much. Finding fulfillment in free time is a talent, and we're losing it... more »
Skepticism toward intellectual authority runs deep in America. It's a healthy instinct, until it's not. Tom Nichols is worried about the death of expertise... more »
What happens when biography — which, after all, is embodied history — puts mouths, bellies, and beards back into the 19th century? A wonderful experiment... more »
P.G. Wodehouse was not merely unserious but positively anti-serious, and therein lay much of his considerable charm — and the cause of considerable trouble... more »
He arrived in America in 1774, broke and sick. Two years later, he was at the heart of the revolutionary movement. Thomas Paine has quite a story... more »
A thousand pages of heavily redacted text, years of legal appeals, a censorious scolding of the FBI. James Baldwin’s FBI file has had a life of its own... more »
The idea of privilege — the accusation of privilege — has moved many people to say things not only nonsensical and ungenerous, but simply untrue... more »
In praise of profanity. Swearing helps us manages stress and build trust. In fact, with proper tone and timing, it’s an art... more »
"Excellence," "profession," "symposium," "text,": Where did the language of academic life come from, and how do certain words become the property of one ideology?... more »
The finest art, felt the Greeks, was a perfect illusion of reality. “Aphrodite of Knidos” blurred the boundary between marble and flesh... more »
Norman Mailer's library: On the shelf: Dostoyevsky, Proust, Graham Greene, and two sets of the Warren Commission Report. In the bathroom: poetry anthologies... more »
Agatha Christie's unsolvable mystery: In 1926 she vanished for 11 days. When she was discovered — at a British spa — she refused to discuss her disappearance... more »
We like to think of liberal democracy as deepening its roots with every passing year. But democracy is in decline, and young people especially are disenchanted... more »
When music went minimalist. Boos echoed around Carnegie Hall; patrons headed for the exits; a woman banged her shoe on the stage, imploring the musicians to stop... more »
Galileo’s invention of the telescope not only broke with the church but upset philosophers as well. “To observe through those glasses gives me a headache,” said one professor... more »
Joanna Russ isn't much remembered in the annals of science fiction, nor women’s writing, and certainly not American literature. But her influence is felt all the same... more »
The surprisingly successful addict. During her battle with alcohol, Leslie Jamison got prestigious degrees, sold a novel, and took the world by storm... more »
Ian Buruma as a young man: From 1975 to 1981 he lived in Japan, appearing in whiskey ads and on stage wearing only a scarlet jockstrap... more »
Nautilus has asked scientists what they would be if they weren’t scientists. The most popular response: Filmmaker. How to explain this interest?... more »
When artists had jobs. Philip Glass was a plumber; James Dickey, a sloganeer for Coca-Cola. Day jobs provided artists with space for stray thoughts. Can they still?... more »
Reading Crime and Punishment today, we are reminded of the need to take willful self-destruction seriously. There is no rationale to human behavior... more »
The mysterious Cormac McCarthy. He’s intensely private about interviews and public appearances. But why, at 83, has he ventured into nonfiction?... more »
Profanity was long considered low and dirty, the opposite of the sublime. Then came Philip Larkin, Eileen Myles, and the rise of poetic profanity... more »
In the room where Mailer and Talese and Capote got drunk, about a dozen people — mostly women — vie to become the next editor of The Paris Review ... more »
Ivan Ilyin, an apologist for political violence, wrote 40 books. His aim was to advance a moral justification for totalitarianism. It's working... more »
The lofty verb "curate" has been adopted eagerly, even anxiously, in a vain attempt to sprinkle fairy dust over something quite ordinary... more »
If only he’d been a lawyer. Samuel Johnson was too poor to afford legal studies — instead he did hack writing and signed a letter “Impransus”— the supperless one... more »
Alain Locke, dean of the Harlem Renaissance, believed in the “ethics of beauty itself.” But the creation of art, he knew, has political consequences... more »
Leo Stein was dogmatic, pompous, even a bit deranged, and essential. The professional dilettante's backing came at a crucial time for modernism... more »
Quotable Einstein. He's remembered for musing on education, intelligence, politics, religion, marriage, money, and music-making. How much of it is apocryphal?... more »
Skepticism toward intellectual authority runs deep in America. It's a healthy instinct, until it's not. Tom Nichols is worried about the death of expertise... more »
He arrived in America in 1774, broke and sick. Two years later, he was at the heart of the revolutionary movement. Thomas Paine has quite a story... more »
In praise of profanity. Swearing helps us manages stress and build trust. In fact, with proper tone and timing, it’s an art... more »
Norman Mailer's library: On the shelf: Dostoyevsky, Proust, Graham Greene, and two sets of the Warren Commission Report. In the bathroom: poetry anthologies... more »
The mind’s struggle over the body has become a kind of mortal combat. “Have a good workout” is no longer sufficient. You must “crush your workout”... more »
Norman Podhoretz's Making It was the object of ridicule even before it was published. But Janet Malcolm detects a discreet charm in this tale of ambition... more »
The economist Amartya Sen was early to see the folly of acting as if we can separate our moral lives from our material concerns. It's made him our greatest living critic of capitalism... more »
"I’ve lost my nerve a little bit. I think it’s growing older, and a certain reservoir of anger literally runs out," says James Wood. He’s "not slaying people anymore"... more »
Welcome to Roswell, New Mexico, the convergence of America's weakness for the strange, penchant for conspiratorial thinking, and knack for turning a buck... more »
From her harsh theater reviews to her novel My Ántonia, Willa Cather demonstrated an intensity of observation. Jane Smiley explains... more »
In 1905 the poet George Sterling established an artists' colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. Then things got dark: murders and suicide pacts... more »
At Cornell's legendary Food and Brand Lab, research is conducted in an unusual way: Collect data first, form hypotheses later. “This is not science, it is storytelling"... more »
Debussy’s idiotic ballet about a tennis match remained an avant-garde favorite 40 years later. In music, revolutionary styles and popularity are wedded... more »
By the time a new dictionary is complete, it’s out of date. Still, the quest to capture the meaning of everything remains a noble one... more »
The dean of the Harlem Renaissance was not Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston, but the editor and impresario Alain Locke. Such obscurity is undeserved... more »
Edward Abbey was a bus driver, park ranger, anarchist, and philosopher of the desert. He sought solitude but secretly craved the approval of the New York literati... more »
Animal-voiced poems tend to be quirky and quaint, like T.S. Eliot’s on cats. Enter Don Marquis, a fatalistic newspaperman who wrote cockroach-based poetry... more »
The anti-Habermas. Peter Sloterdijk made his career sparring with the Frankfurt School and predicting the demise of liberal democracy. The times have caught up to him... more »
Picasso’s erotic year. In 1932 the artist, 50, had a torrid affair with his 22-year-old model. Even his banal subjects — a fruit platter, a shadow — turned phallic... more »
The comprehensive John Stuart Mill. He was out to combine Bentham with poetry, the Enlightenment with Romanticism, and to span the entire philosophy of his time... more »
A robot Rembrandt? Artificial intelligence cannot yet make fine art. When it can, the results will be both painfully boring and beyond our wildest imagination... more »
In praise of bibliomancy. The idea that literature could predict the future captivated 17th-century royals. Today it reminds us that books possess a rare magic... more »
Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon: he was poor, uneducated, and smitten; she was rich, pious, and uninterested. On their first date, they went to a Dickens reading... more »
Life with Doris Lessing. An author attempts to enact her radical concept of freedom. But can a life so liberated regain a conventional shape?... more »
What happens to anthropology when its fundamental divisions are undone — when magic and reason, and “primitive” and “modern,” no longer organize the field?... more »
The world’s least orthodox literary salon: a fascist lecturing to literary titans in an asylum. Ezra Pound’s visitors, the “Ezrologists,” pioneered the tale of the “bughouse” visit... more »
Baffled cows, depressed does, and conniving roosters. Science paints an ever-fuller picture of the inner lives of animals. But are we any closer to understanding their minds?... more »
Fatalism is a permanent temptation of politics. Optimistic fatalism competes with the pessimistic variety. Democracy requires finding a way between them... more »
Don't underestimate the power of an impertinent question. That’s what drove Oriana Fallaci, whose interview subjects usually regretted giving her the time. “Being a journalist means being disobedient”... more »
Each generation of historians conveys the Jewish past in a way that's bound up with its vision of the Jewish future. Those visions generally turn out to be wrong... more »
Is criticism influential? If so, is that influence beneficial or malign? The first answer is yes. The second answer is complicated... more »
“The two ways," Kierkegaard wrote. "One is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of the fact that another suffered.” But few suffered as much as the woman who loved him... more »
Many of our best theories are not true in a strict sense, but rather are idealizations. Such concepts, useful in everyday life, are intellectually dangerous... more »
We used to know what people meant when they spoke about someone’s "reputation." Now it's supposedly an elusive concept... more »
The notion that history consists of a single grand narrative is almost universally regarded as a comforting myth. But not to Marcel Gauchet ... more »
The bloodiest genre: books by dictators. Mao's Little Red Book,, Gaddafi’s Green Book, Saddam Hussein’s Get Out, You Damned One! ... more »
Eugene Genovese found much to admire in the culture of the slaveholding Southern planter class. It's a view shared by few, if any, historians today... more »
Darwin had eczema, so he grew a beard; Dickens hid his receding chin. Then there was the matter of George Eliot’s hands... more »
As a nurse during the Civil War, Walt Whitman met thousands of wounded soldiers. He confronted the sheer physicality of death: The soul may move on, but the body remains... more »
Writers and their mothers. Is there any hope for a broken heart? Eva Larkin asked her son, Philip. He was the best-qualified person to answer, or the worst... more »
What happens when biography — which, after all, is embodied history — puts mouths, bellies, and beards back into the 19th century? A wonderful experiment... more »
A thousand pages of heavily redacted text, years of legal appeals, a censorious scolding of the FBI. James Baldwin’s FBI file has had a life of its own... more »
"Excellence," "profession," "symposium," "text,": Where did the language of academic life come from, and how do certain words become the property of one ideology?... more »
Agatha Christie's unsolvable mystery: In 1926 she vanished for 11 days. When she was discovered — at a British spa — she refused to discuss her disappearance... more »
On his last legs, Oscar Wilde wore expensive clothes, smoked gold-tipped cigarettes, and requested fresh toiletries and cologne. He was, he insisted, “dying above his means"... more »
The automobile, Renoir said, was an "idiotic thing"; trains were a "crazy idea." His crankiness, however, was tempered by self-awareness: "I am the worst old fogy"... more »
Biographers establish facts, collect anecdotes, link cause and effect so that a life can be made whole on the page. But why should a personality hang together?... more »
Paris's Left Bank during the war: Strict rationing, shocking poverty, and yet: “I lived in a kind of blessed island, in the middle of an ocean of mud and blood”... more »
The value of not understanding. For Grace Paley, “write what you know” was a guarantee of dullness. Art comes from exploring the unknown... more »
The Jewishness of Jewish comedy shows itself in only obscure ways, because the comedians didn't want to identify themselves as Jewish... more »
Do animals possess language, culture, morality, a soul? “It would be less interesting to know what animals are, if it were not a means to know what we are”... more »
Wanted on charges of homosexual activity, Oscar Wilde was given time to flee to France. Even his mother urged him to go. Yet he would not... more »
In the 1920s, John W. Dunne, an aeronautical engineer and fly fisherman, set the literary world on fire with an idea: Dreams can predict the future... more »
Isaac Newton’s views included Arianism, alchemy, Egyptian theology, and the Noachian faith. Why was such a seemingly modern thinker so obsessed with ancient ideas?... more »
The East German writer Christa Wolf grew up under state surveillance. Later, in her diaries, she continued a sort of spying on herself... more »
The persistence of fairy tales. From Angela Carter onward, authors have retold, revised, and remixed classic stories. Today the genre is delightfully chaotic... more »
Zadie Smith’s talent is writing dialogue — an intellectual, imaginary impersonation. In this way she contains multitudes. Her point is that we all do... more »
The historian Yuval Harari champions “Dataism”; thinks emotions are simply algorithms; and says people will become like gods in the future. He is wrong, says David Berlinski... more »
As a young writer, Philip Roth would begin each morning by shouting “Attack! Attack!” at himself in the mirror. Why would such a man cease writing?... more »
David Jones — engraver, soldier, painter, poet— overcame war, a nervous breakdown, and episodes of erotic frustration. He was the greatest modernist Britain ever produced... more »
King Arthur was actually a Roman centurion named Artorius — or so holds an intriguing if implausible theory. Dipping into Celtic history is dangerous for writers’ reputations... more »
The historian Reinhart Koselleck proposed that world history be divided into three epochs: pre-horse, horse, and post-horse. Now horses are “ghosts of modernity”... more »
The poet Joan Murray died at 24. Her manuscripts, sent to be preserved, apparently fell off the back of a truck. Is it fair, then, to call her a minor poet?... more »
When fiction fuels the future. Sun-powered screens, electric weather, telepathy via battery — by picturing what’s to come, does science fiction help us invent it?... more »
Hyper-liberalism is the academy's legitimating ideology, says John Gray. "The result is a richly entertaining mixture of bourgeois careerism with virtue-signaling self-righteousness"... more »
Our old photos follow us online, and it’s become increasingly difficult to achieve distance from the past. That’s changed our politics and, perhaps, our thinking... more »
For James Wood, the novel is “the slayer of religions.” Rationalist writers like Ian McEwan agree — they want their craft to be more scientific, less spiritual. Is it?... more »
In Shakespeare's time, there were no directors. Plays were performed without scenery, on open stages. It's still something of a mystery what directors do... more »
When did the sum total of a college’s intellectual value become reducible to its willingness to host controversial speakers?... more »
Communing with art won’t make you money, burn calories, or help you network. It may, writes Claire Messud, help you find joy in the superfluous and glory in each day... more »
Science is thought to be cold and clinical, art warm and encouraging of wonder. The drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal reveal that divide for what it is: nonsense... more »
"I am sick to death of hearing about Karl Marx. I am sick of his name, his -isms, his undoubted genius, and his 'philosophy.' Most of all, I am sick of his 'relevance'"... more »
Workers get more education; their productivity and income go up. A nation gets more education; its productivity and income go up. Hogwash, says Bryan Caplan... more »
A crisis stalks the modern world: the hunt for manliness. It began in the 19th century and continues to contaminate politics and culture... more »
Whatever happened to alienation? It was once considered central to modern life, the stuff of Sartre, Camus, and Salinger. Now it seems to have vanished... more »
Was Eve “seduced” by the serpent? The question is familiar for being so ancient. Anne Enright has an answer: No... more »
Academic satire has gone the way of the theory-brandishing rock stars it once lampooned. Academics aren't laughing anymore; they're despondent... more »
Idleness, Virginia Woolf thought, could be both strenuous and catatonic. The Bloomsbury Group was lazy, and proud of it — they were theorists (and practitioners) of leisure... more »
We hear a lot about "the future of work." The future of leisure? Not so much. Finding fulfillment in free time is a talent, and we're losing it... more »
P.G. Wodehouse was not merely unserious but positively anti-serious, and therein lay much of his considerable charm — and the cause of considerable trouble... more »
The idea of privilege — the accusation of privilege — has moved many people to say things not only nonsensical and ungenerous, but simply untrue... more »
The finest art, felt the Greeks, was a perfect illusion of reality. “Aphrodite of Knidos” blurred the boundary between marble and flesh... more »
We like to think of liberal democracy as deepening its roots with every passing year. But democracy is in decline, and young people especially are disenchanted... more »
The male glance is the opposite of the male gaze. Rather than linger lovingly on women, it looks, assumes, and moves on. It is ruining our ability to see good art... more »
Albert Camus and Maria Casarès traded nearly 1,000 letters. Reading them, we discover a man we thought we knew and a woman most of us never knew... more »
Haters of literature bring four charges: abuse of authority, lack of morality, perversion of truth, and diminished usefulness. Yet they mask a more depressing reality — shared indifference to literature... more »
Since Rousseau, at least, we've told ourselves a story about the shape and direction of human history. Big problem: It isn't true... more »
What attracted a gregarious psychiatrist to a reclusive professor? Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze bonded over a mutual distrust of identity... more »
Who is more to blame for the crisis of liberalism over the past four decades: Homi Bhabha and Judith Butler — or Lawrence Summers?... more »
October 18, 1973: Sotheby's auctioned works by Twombley, Johns, and Rauschenberg. It was called the day the art world collapsed. Well, no, but it was the beginning of the end... more »
The incarnations of Bruno Latour. A devoted Catholic disdainful of universal truths, critic of science turned climate-science promoter, playwright, military collaborator... more »
According to Will Self, novels are a jungle gym for the mind. So choose challenging texts: “No one ever got smart by reading … Dan Brown”... more »
A taxonomy of unfinished novels. Common causes include writer’s block and death. Then there are those works whose unfinishability is an aesthetic virtue... more »
The history of anti-literature: Whether Plato's denouncing literary fantasy or Oscar Wilde's labeling art useless, they are unintentional tributes... more »
A well-intentioned culture of positivity has pervaded contemporary book reviewing. The result? Advertisement-style frippery. Bring back the hatchet job... more »
The awfulness of pop culture. It promises to deliver pleasure — then fails. It suggests aesthetic freedom — but is only a mirage. Or so thought Adorno... more »
Marcuse for the new millennium. The philosopher’s insights into automation are key to understanding our work-obsessed age: Busyness makes us bad thinkers... more »
In Egypt, Flaubert grew ““ignobly plump,” took in striptease shows, and was dazzled by the country's colors. The color eau de Nil stems from such Egyptomania... more »
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Mailer, Carver, Lish: the literary sections of magazines like Esquire and GQ were, for decades, a cult of maleness. Are they still?... more »
“Every passion, ultimately, has its spectator," wrote Barthes. That is especially true, Leslie Jamison explains, at Croatia’s Museum of Broken Relationships... more »
Lunch at the White House, parties with celebrities, hangouts with plutocrats in Aspen. Will Ta-Nehisi Coates’s proximity to power distort his perspective?... more »
Steven Pinker may be the most optimistic man in America. But his optimism curdles into despair at the way science is treated on many campuses... more »
Louis-Ferdinand Céline became famous suddenly and infamous soon after. Can we distinguish “good” Céline, the novelist, from “bad” Céline, the anti-Semitic pamphleteer?... more »
Publishing is an upper-class industry that attracts upper-class writers. This social and cultural sliver has a profound impact on whose stories get told... more »
Why do art collectors collect? To establish political legitimacy, to claim aristocratic roots, for tax write-offs — the reasons are as varied as the collectors... more »
Zadie Smith has been ordained a public intellectual, adopted the attendant seriousness, and learned a lesson: Middle age is no fun... more »
Depravity makes for bad art, but not always. It's a mistake to apply norms of social respectability to artistic expression. That way leads to moralistic kitsch... more »
Ready-mades before Duchamp, Cy Twombly-esque scribblings 40 years before his heyday. The work of mentally ill artists reveals their bold originality... more »
The strangely contested legacy of Antonio Gramsci. His thought is championed in the pages of Marxism Today and by pundits on the far right — why?... more »
For years, women only whispered about sexual harassment, for fear of reprisal from men. Now they fear other women. Katie Roiphe on the chilling effect of the new feminist orthodoxy... more »
Renata Adler, Lorin Stein, and Ann Coulter were there. Steve Bannon was not. Wine, whiskey, water, but no one drank much. Michael Wolff's book party... more »
Innocence and guilt are legal standards. When we talk about Woody Allen, we deal with murkier issues. A.O. Scott on what most troubles him... more »
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