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The New Yorker

Joyce Carol Oates’s Prolific Search for a Self

In more than a hundred works of fiction, Oates has investigated the question of personality—while doubting that she actually has one. Rachel Aviv reports on one of the world’s most celebrated writers, now in her ninth decade, who has written, “The persona is infinitely flexible because it has no center.”

Oates at home in New Jersey.
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The Lede

Reporting and analysis on the affairs of the day.

Biden and Xi’s Blunt Talk

Nobody should expect diplomacy between the U.S. and China to return to the performative, if misleading, good cheer of a generation ago.

The Michigan Sign-Stealing Story Is the Perfect College-Football Scandal

The whole thing is stupid, which is why it’s all such good news, even for Michigan.

The Left Comes for Biden on Israel

As the Israel-Hamas war divides the Democrats, what does it mean that young activists are protesting the President, not Xi Jinping or Donald Trump?

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The New Yorker Interview

John Woo Returns to Hollywood

The Hong Kong filmmaker talks about his quest to make personal genre movies, his enduring faith in friendship, and his new, dialogue-free revenge drama, “Silent Night.”

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The Israel-Hamas War

Israeli Forces Reportedly Detain a New Yorker Contributor

Mosab Abu Toha is an award-winning poet and a father of three who lives in Gaza. His current whereabouts are unknown.

How Qatar Became the World’s Go-To Hostage Negotiator

The Gulf state is trying to help Hamas and Israel come to a deal. How did it become one of the world’s most prominent hostage-situation mediators?

The Trauma of Gaza’s Doctors

The head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Palestine on the horrors of practicing medicine under siege.

How Gaza and the British Right Split London

Duelling Armistice Day protests, a country divided over Israel and Palestine, and the return of David Cameron.

The Use of Children, Hostages, and the Vulnerable in War

The war in Gaza has the feel of history sliding backward.

Escalating Violence Between Israel and Lebanon

There’s a sense of history repeating itself along the border, where tens of thousands have been displaced and the civilian death toll is climbing.

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families

The relatives of those held by Hamas “live with a timer now that’s always on.”

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A Mother’s Grief in New Haven

Laquvia Jones lost both of her sons to shootings. Now she wonders why a city with a deep sense of community—and one of the wealthiest universities in the world—can’t figure out how to address gun violence. 

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Comment

Opinions, arguments, and reflections on the news.

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Dept. of Popular Culture

Bravo in the Flesh

More than a hundred and sixty reality stars descended on Las Vegas, for BravoCon, where they were pulled apart by their harshest critics, who also happen to be their most diehard fans.

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Dept. of Dolls

Under Review

Why Are Millennials Still Attached to American Girl?

From the beginning, Pleasant Rowland’s invention wasn’t just a doll but a brand.

The Weekend Essay

Why Barbie Must Be Punished

Mothers, daughters, and an icon’s existential crisis.

Fiction

“A French Doll”

It was not a plaything, a toy baby doll that a child could dress and undress and pretend to scold in a grownup voice.

A Critic at Large

When Barbie Went to War with Bratz

How a legal battle over intellectual property exposed a cultural battle over sex, gender roles, and the workplace.

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Books

What if Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be?

As our faith in the future plummets and the present blends with the past, we doomscroll and catastrophize and feel certain that we’ve reached the point where history has fallen apart.

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The Critics

The Front Row

“Saltburn” Is a “Brideshead” for the Incel Age

Emerald Fennell’s class satire is diabolically clever, but there is a void at its center.

Listening Booth

PinkPantheress Is a Hopeless Romantic

On her new album, “Heaven Knows,” the songstress displays a yearning quality that’s surprisingly difficult to locate in today’s pop world.

Books

The Morality of Having Kids in a Burning, Drowning World

The books “The Quickening” and “The Parenthood Dilemma” consider the ethics of procreation in the age of man-made climate change.

Pop Music

On “Higher,” Chris Stapleton Makes His Case for Love

The country star’s album is concerned almost exclusively with affairs of the heart—but his gritty voice never sounds sentimental.

The Current Cinema

“Maestro” Is a Leonard Bernstein Bio-Pic as Restless as Its Subject

Bradley Cooper stars in his own film about the conductor-composer, but it is Carey Mulligan, as Bernstein’s wife, who walks away with the movie.

The Theatre

A Search for Faith, in Three Plays

In “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” “Scene Partners,” and “Waiting for Godot,” characters skirt the fringes of belief and delusion.

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The Food Scene

A Food-Themed Holiday Gift Guide

Kitchen tools, culinary trinkets, tinned treats, dinner-party fixings, and many more curios for the person of appetites in your life.

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Annals of Artificial Intelligence

The Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built

Geoffrey Hinton has spent a lifetime teaching computers to learn. Now he worries that artificial brains are better than ours.

A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft

Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.

Does A.I. Lead Police to Ignore Contradictory Evidence?

Too often, a facial-recognition search represents virtually the entirety of a police investigation.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Experts have warned that realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.

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The New Yorker Documentary

“Parker”

A short film by Sharon Liese and Catherine Hoffman follows three close-knit generations through the process of changing their last name and unravelling family history.

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Culture Desk

The Revolutionary Printmaking of Kerry James Marshall

“It’s really about the exploration of forms and potentials—a process of figuring out what can be done,” the artist says.

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Puzzles & Games

Take a break and play.

Name Drop: Make Me Laugh

Can you guess the identities of these nine comedy legends?

The Crossword

A puzzle that ranges in difficulty, with themes on Fridays.

Solve the latest puzzle

The Cryptic

A puzzle for lovers of wily wordplay.

Solve this week’s puzzle

Caption Contest

We provide a cartoon, you provide a caption.

Enter this week’s contest
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Listen to The New Yorker

The Kingpin Who Kidnapped Migrants for Ransom

An Eritrean trafficker promised to help Africans desperate to reach Europe—then brutalized them inside a Libyan compound while extorting their families back home. With his fortune, he partied in Dubai.

Bayard Rustin Gets to Shine in Our Era

The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?

Can Happiness Be Taught?

Bolstered by Oprah, a Harvard Business School professor thinks you should run your inner self like a company.

A Trans Teen in an Anti-Trans State

One family’s move to find gender-affirming care.

Fiction

“Beauty Contest”

Photograph by Kyoko Hamada for The New Yorker
My mother had two treasures. One was an opal ring, the only present she ever received from my late father. She kept it in a small box and took it out only once or twice a year, on special occasions, for a few short hours. The box, which was covered in deep-blue velvet, made a little sound, like a kitten yawning, when it was opened.

When I was alone in the house, I often opened the box to stare at the opal.Continue reading »

The Talk of the Town

Fetish Dept.

Johnny Marr Loves his Axes

Now You See It

The Statue Wars Turn to Cyberspace

London Postcard

Milk, the Book!

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