May 18, 2023 | Parents of young children are rarely alone, and yet they report feeling lonely. How to explain? Donald Winnicott has some theories... more »
May 17, 2023 | The culture industry has gotten very good at reflecting back our taste to us. Art is boring now because we are boring... more »
May 16, 2023 | An extreme figure even in decadent fin-de-siècle Paris, Jean Lorrain was a dandy, Satanist, drinker of ether, and highly paid writer... more »
May 15, 2023 | “Whereas algorithms present personalized recommendations by rank, the blurb is a one-rank system of aesthetic value: utterly awesome” ... more »
May 12, 2023 | “Female friendships, rather than literary marriages or bros with quills, are a force for the creation and continuation of literary culture”... more »
May 11, 2023 | Hannah Arendt is hardly an icon of gay culture. So how was it that she helped to shape American gay identity?... more »
May 10, 2023 | Critical thinking has been “infected with phraseology” in the form of sanctimonious sloganeering and technical jargon... more »
May 9, 2023 | Even if artificial intelligence is truly intelligent, intelligence and creativity are two different things. Which is why AI can't make good art... more »
May 8, 2023 | Unusual writing can be eloquent writing. It can also be just plain unusual. Consider the essayist Brian Dillon... more »
May 5, 2023 | Style tip from Christopher Lasch: Jettison ostentatious erudition, abbreviations, and acronyms. Initials are for desiccated bureaucrats... more »
May 4, 2023 | The history of the swing. From Greece to Borneo, swinging has been a form of magic, a means of warding off evil, a form of celebration... more »
May 3, 2023 | Semafor, Air Mail, Punchbowl News, Puck, Substack: Making sense of the cacophonous, paywall-inhibited online reading environment... more »
May 2, 2023 | Roger Scruton wasn’t judicious about his associates. Now he’s being used by more-brutish conservatives as a shield of sophistication... more »
May 1, 2023 | Libertarian critics of democracy make several valid points. But there's no evidence their alternatives are better, and much to suggest they'd be worse ... more »
April 28, 2023 | Neutrality might be a fiction, but it is an essential one, says Anthony Appiah. "Performing fairness can make us fairer"... more »
April 27, 2023 | Literary criticism is flourishing, says Ryan Ruby, despite – and sometimes because of – dire economic circumstances... more »
April 26, 2023 | Nations and peoples fall into nostalgic moods just as individuals do. Its allure is as strong as its destructive potential. Mark Lilla explains... more »
April 25, 2023 | “I’ve taken enormous walks and lived on rice and codfish tongues and I feel like a new man.” John Dos Passos was at home on Cape Cod... more »
April 24, 2023 | We like clear-cut rules, but life is full of extenuating circumstances. Enter discretion, an uncomfortable yet necessary virtue... more »
April 21, 2023 | “I was in the right emotional state for a nine-day (yes) wellness cruise from Barcelona to Rome. This is precisely why I really, really did not want to go”... more »
April 20, 2023 | The trouble caused by desire, and by the inability to be good, are familiar problems that Andrea Long Chu explores in new ways... more »
April 19, 2023 | Imagine a future in which serious publications have disappeared, and the cultural discourse is dominated by the progeny of celebrities. Is it that far off?... more »
April 18, 2023 | "I am in a relationship with the internet. It is in my mind, and my mind is in it, and it causes feelings in my body. Good feelings and crazy-making feelings"... more »
April 17, 2023 | What draws contemporary literary critics to Elizabeth Hardwick? Her loose, fragmentary form and resistance to easy answers... more »
April 14, 2023 | “What ought we to do about great art made by bad men?” Engage with it, don't quash it. Judith Shulevitz explains... more »