Feb. 28, 2023 | The art of the blasphemer is based on a question: “Why do the feelings of the religious matter more than mine?”... more »
Feb. 27, 2023 | Hannah Rose Woods: “It feels terrible as a writer to admit, but I’ve been struggling to read for pleasure” ... more »
Feb. 25, 2023 | “It is an infernal riddle of digital culture that ‘authenticity’ is constantly breeding its opposite: the ‘spontaneous’ event that proves to be no such thing” ... more »
Feb. 24, 2023 | Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis built the tenets of modern dance: pastoral simplicity, revolutionary fervor, Eastern ritual... more »
Feb. 23, 2023 | Most concerned with technology and the economy, does “progress studies” have room for progress in art, ethics, and culture? ... more »
Feb. 22, 2023 | Painters have rendered shadows incorrectly for centuries. But artistic liberties with physics can contain aesthetic multitudes... more »
Feb. 21, 2023 | The “capricious, exacting, exquisite” Hope Mirrlees wrote one of the greatest fantasy novels of all time, though it went uncelebrated in her day... more »
Feb. 20, 2023 | Emily Dickinson’s poetry reflected a scientific consensus — the essential characteristics of plants and animals could not be easily distinguished ... more »
Feb. 18, 2023 | "Conspiracies are symptoms of the anxiety which comes from freedom," says Terry Eagleton. "They are antidotes to the open-endedness of history" ... more »
Feb. 17, 2023 | Allan Bloom excelled at culture-war sloganeering. Was it cover for his transgressive sexual and intellectual exhortations? Consider Bronze Age Pervert... more »
Feb. 16, 2023 | Spare a thought for the Paleolithic child, whose activities included herding, fetching water, harvesting vegetables, and making stone tools... more »
Feb. 15, 2023 | Snark v. smarm. For two decades, the cultural climate was marked by the battle between scornful knowingness and superficial seriousness ... more »
Feb. 14, 2023 | “Scholars involved with the literary, visual, and musical arts have fundamentally misunderstood or at least misconstrued the role of the arts in human history” ... more »
Feb. 13, 2023 | Dream sequences, italics, preternaturally clever children, talking animals — the list of things readers hate is long and varied... more »
Feb. 11, 2023 | Why do literary types put so much emphasis on the power of story? They have nowhere else to turn... more »
Feb. 10, 2023 | Thomas Nagel compels us to confront the possibility that the most fundamental problems of philosophy are insoluble — but no less important for that... more »
Feb. 9, 2023 | Joy, happiness, disgust, and melancholy have their explicators and advocates. Delight, however, is an intellectual orphan. That's a shame... more »
Feb. 8, 2023 | Orwell praised Friedrich Hayek for having the courage to be "unfashionable." He was also self-certain, obtuse, elusive, and often oblivious ... more »
Feb. 7, 2023 | Our culture is awash in “Easter eggs” — covert messages in songs, books, and film. Hunting for them is a waste of time... more »
Feb. 6, 2023 | Marx's style. His polemical and literary temperament — suffused with irony, mockery, critique — cannot be walled off from his social theory... more »
Feb. 4, 2023 | We take “getting lost in a book” to be a good thing. For Petrarch, the voracious reader was an intellectually malnourished, overstimulated junkie... more »
Feb. 3, 2023 | The story of Joshua Katz isn’t really about him — it is about us, our cynicism, and our politicization of everything. Celeste Marcus explains... more »
Feb. 2, 2023 | The real controversy behind the film The Woman King? The poor state of our knowledge of African history... more »
Feb. 1, 2023 | How does the Philippines — a nation with at least 150 languages — read José Rizal, the national poet and novelist? In English... more »
Jan. 31, 2023 | Some clever-seeming, rich young men have renounced reading books. Their moral vision is severely lacking... more »