Articles of Note
Leonardo and Michelangelo were driven and difficult, which is central to their modern appeal. The less mercurial Raphael is more admired than loved... more »
New Books
The history of modern cool is one of strange convergences — among French intellectuals, black musicians, and white Hollywood heroes... more »
Essays & Opinions
In 1967, Timothy Leary told Allen Ginsberg to drop out. "What can I drop out of?" Ginsberg asked. "Your teaching at Cal," Leary said. Ginsberg chuckled. "But I need the money"... more »
Articles of Note
A new history of the right is red meat for the left. Critics have tried to dismantle the book, footnote by footnote. Has anyone actually read it?... more »
New Books
The only thing worse than newspaper humor is newspaper humor written in dialect. So why does the rube-journalist shtick of Ring Lardner hold up?... more »
Essays & Opinions
The Cold War lasted until 1991, but Cold War philosophy is still with us. Consider the strange and enduring career of rational choice theory... more »
Articles of Note
Gene editing threatens to homogenize society, says Atul Gawande. Aberrant yet valuable characteristics are under threat. Think of George Church's narcolepsy... more »
New Books
Fiery or meek, bombastic or shy, licentious or pious, revolutionary or reactionary, cunning or naïve: Martin Luther cut a contradictory swath across history... more »
Essays & Opinions
Biology and its discontents. Techno-optimists come in all stripes — scientists, seekers, grifters, con artists. They share a zeal for augmenting their bodies... more »
Articles of Note
Rather than “Which side are you on?,” Samuel Huntington wrote, the question in the post-Cold War world would be “Who are you?” What a prescient insight... more »
New Books
For Stuart Hall, culture is what defines common sense and builds our identities. But how to understand the role of culture we never experience?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Alcohol dissolves the barrier between aspiration and judgment. Come morning, the barrier is rebuilt. You mourn for the feeling you had last night. Metaphysics of the hangover... more »
Articles of Note
Darwin and women. Publicly dismissive of the female intellect, in private he was completely dependent on it... more »
New Books
“I have a natural horror of letting people see how my mind works,” wrote John Ashbery at 23. Why is he now engaged in a project of self-exposure?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Charles Fourier thought men would grow tails. John Humphrey Noyes had a penchant for awkward sexual metaphors. Meet the founders of America’s utopian experiments... more »
Articles of Note
Among most economists, globalization has been seen as both inevitable and salutary. Now the cracks in that consensus have split wide open... more »
New Books
Mocking Thoreau is a pastime that dates back to his time. He was tagged as a hypocrite, a fraud — and a lazy one at that — even before Walden was published... more »
Essays & Opinions
A Chinese writer sets a novel during the Holocaust? A Jewish boy writes about a black man in 1810? It’s the result that matters, not the creator... more »
Articles of Note
Questions of policy and of social science run on different tracks. Mixing them gets complicated. Consider Brown v. Board of Education... more »
New Books
A.E. Housman thought poetry's power wasn’t intellectual but emotional. For many young men — especially gay young men — his A Shropshire Lad was a secret Bible... more »
Essays & Opinions
Artistic fashion comes and goes. What remains is the experience of culture — its beauty, its reach, its strangeness, its ability to transform an ordinary life... more »
Articles of Note
Information existed before Claude Shannon, but there was little sense of it as an idea, an object of hard science. His insight made our world possible... more »
New Books
Ulysses and the law. In 1899, Joyce attended a murder trial in Dublin. The case helped form the fabric of a novel that landed him in court... more »
Essays & Opinions
Truman Capote's excesses would, in his final years, seal his fate as an outcast of the "in" crowd. Now that Capote the personality has faded, it's easier to assess Capote the artist... more »
Articles of Note
20th-century American conservatism was a combination of inherited reflexes and political opportunism that never made any sense. Now it's come undone... more »
New Books
Black pudding, chipped beef on toast, jellied bouillon salad, protein powder stirred into diet orange soda: “Every life has a food story, and every food story is unique”... more »
Essays & Opinions
The emphasis on smarts, combined with black people’s grievous history in America, suggests an approach to the issue of race and IQ: Stop talking about it. John McWhorter explains... more »
Articles of Note
Digital text alone is impoverished and, on occasion, emotionally arid. It lacks the nonverbal cues — body language — of spoken communication. That's why we need emoji... more »
Essays & Opinions
Flaubert, who sometimes took days to compose a single sentence and then tossed it out, has been called a martyr of literary style. Now critics are chipping away at his reputation... more »
Articles of Note
Philip Larkin's things include a Hitler figurine, empty spines of the diaries that he wished shredded after his death, and ample evidence of his own self-loathing... more »
New Books
A melding of design and utility, a marvel of compression and precision, one of history’s most versatile and durable technologies. In praise of the card catalog... more »
Essays & Opinions
What was prog rock? Proof that artistically ambitious and intellectually sophisticated modern music that embraces artistic tradition can have a large — if fleeting — popular following... more »
Articles of Note
At 23, Charlotte Brontë became a governess. The experience would inform her later fiction: What better way to learn subordination, exploitation, and humiliation?... more »
New Books
Confessional memoir purports to liberate its author from the past. But does self-exposure really set you free? Consider the poet Patricia Lockwood... more »
Essays & Opinions
Is Western democracy Orwellian? Neoreactionary “Dark Enlightenment” theorists think so, making their case via cybernetics, The Matrix, and H.P. Lovecraft... more »
Articles of Note
The history of the closet. It made itself useful in 15th-century Italy, where studioli housed secret poems and experimental philosophy... more »
New Books
“Can I come home with you?” Diane Arbus would follow a couple home or pick up odd-looking men on the street, all in search of authentic experience... more »
Essays & Opinions
Mary McCarthy reserved the right to be “difficult.” What this meant in practice was that she was lacerating, supremely clever, and above all opportunistic... more »
Articles of Note
Félix Nadar's guestbook reveals what preoccupied the cultural elite of the Second Empire: morality, boredom, politics, inside jokes, and above all else, artistic ego... more »
New Books
Three hundred pages of egomaniacal longhairs: A book of album covers from the ‘60s and ‘70s reveals the centrality of Magritte, American kitsch, and bad hair... more »
Essays & Opinions
Is it a form of cultural appropriation to take another’s sorrow as the source of your art? Zadie Smith ponders the question... more »
Articles of Note
Isaiah Berlin called Toscanini “the most morally dignified and inspiring hero of our time.” Now he’s seen as the false messiah of middlebrow music appreciation. What gives?... more »
New Books
What can we learn from memoirs of the terminally ill? Universal truths, if they exist at all, are elusive. We die the way we live: idiosyncratically.... more »
Essays & Opinions
Thoreau’s philosophy was based on rivers as well as on Walden. What, then, to make of his siding with industrialists over local farmers when it came to water levels?... more »
Articles of Note
The glory of the Hollywood memoir. Idiosyncratic, biased, boastful, unctuous, and vain, it nevertheless gives us a revealing glimpse into the past... more »
New Books
Kafka abandoned on a balcony; Kafka at an air show. We're intrigued by anecdotes about his life, but what do they tell us?... more »
Essays & Opinions
What laughter means. In medieval times it was a great leveler, inclusive and communal. For modern satirists it is a way of standing apart... more »
Articles of Note
Hemingway vs. Eastman. The literary “battle of the ages” involved evaluations of chest hair, a blow to the face (with a book, of course), slaps, and wrestling moves... more »
New Books
Just a contemplative philosopher? Montaigne’s life was full of misadventure: He fled mobs, was kidnapped by bandits, was exiled from the city where he was mayor... more »
Essays & Opinions
Catching up with the Beats. Kerouac and Ginsberg are gone, but their writerly friends carry the torch. In their 80s and 90s, they haven’t exactly mellowed with age... more »
Articles of Note
E.M. Forster called him a “mixture of insolence and nervousness.” Hemingway said he had “the eyes of an unsuccessful rapist.” What made Wyndham Lewis so unlikable?... more »
New Books
He fell into a vat of boiling water for scalding pigs; then he contracted polio. Does Harry Crews’s childhood explain his affinity for the grotesque?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Is it possible to convey one’s moral vision to another generation? Henry Adams, who wrote a 500-page autobiography without mentioning his wife’s suicide, was skeptical... more »
Articles of Note
How was scientific publishing transformed from profit-shunning to for-profit oligopoly? It was all thanks to a man named Robert Maxwell... more »
New Books
Susan Sontag’s greatest work of criticism was the one she applied to herself. Her journals were not just a record of her life; they were an alternative to it... more »
Essays & Opinions
Yes, power corrupts. It also makes us stupid by undermining the same capacities we need to gain it in the first place... more »
Articles of Note
Feed the cats, water the plants, mail the lesbian literary magazine to subscribers named Starflower, Athena, Kali: What it was like to be Adrienne Rich’s assistant... more »
New Books
Just because you're a man who reads Julia Kristeva doesn’t mean you're not sexist. In the arts, sexism is more often a failure of empathy than of understanding... more »
Essays & Opinions
Hemingway in his day exemplified American macho. Now scholars are giving him a gender-fluid remake: A little less Papa, a little more Mama ... more »
Articles of Note
The Brontë brother, Branwell, was known for vices — opiates, alcohol, married women, setting his bed on fire — but he had literary virtues as well... more »
New Books
Asked about his transformation from Oxford don to thought leader, Niall Ferguson was blunt: “I did it all for the money.” He's not alone... more »
Essays & Opinions
Is free speech under threat in the United States? Not exactly, or at least not in the ways you might think. A Commentary symposium... more »
Articles of Note
Golden age of the short story: the 1890s? 1980s? 2010s? We’ve been celebrating the “revival” of the form since Chekhov. Some perspective, please ... more »
New Books
Cockroaches, crummy days, and lousy lakes. For Grace Paley, every part of life was worthy of literary attention. There was beauty in banality... more »
Essays & Opinions
The life of a ghostwriter. Don't argue with clients, however repulsive. And remember, you'll probably receive no recognition — which may be a good thing... more »
Articles of Note
Is a tome three feet wide by two feet high a book? What about one with an embedded digital clock? Or a suitcase filled with lithographs?... more »
New Books
The essay, that most elegant and slippery of forms, resists being pinned down. Its strength derives from a “combination of exactitude and evasion”... more »
Essays & Opinions
The search for ecstasy. In 1960 an estimated 20 percent of Americans said they'd had a mystical experience. Now it's 50 percent... more »
Articles of Note
Bernard-Henri Lévy can barely read Hebrew and hasn't devoted much time or energy to studying Judaism. That hasn't stopped him from writing a book of pronouncements on the topic... more »
New Books
The brief rise of "prince poo." How the Enlightenment's sensory awakening reached its apex (or nadir) during a French craze for garments the color of baby poop... more »
Essays & Opinions
If economists aren't questioning the effectiveness of economic theory, they should be. Simply put: Their claim to scientific expertise is no longer tenable... more »
Articles of Note
A passion for the mundane. A scuffed old bread knife, a glass vase, a coffee table — ordinary objects delighted, inspired, and confounded Matisse... more »
New Books
Even Bach, musical savant and master of counterpoint, did not escape critique. For one journalist, his work contained “too much art”... more »
Essays & Opinions
Fraud, lies, and the importance of the group. Via attachment theory, Arendt, and Milgram, a former cult member considers the psychology of brainwashing... more »
Articles of Note
Politics run through Shakespeare’s plays, but we know little of his own political opinions. His characters speak, they do not lecture. Yet certain themes recur... more »
New Books
After decades of literary labor, Bulgakov had published little: some short stories, part of a novel. The problem? His failure to understand what was wanted from his work... more »
Essays & Opinions
Orchestras of the Third Reich. Austro-German musicians’ admiration for Hitler strains any belief that high art is ennobling to the spirit... more »
Articles of Note
Float nude in saltwater, pee in a gold toilet, lounge in a field of phalluses. Participatory art preys on our narcissism. Is that a bad thing?... more »
New Books
Mickey Mouse, Jack the Ripper, Proust, mutton chops, ghost stories, comics: Joachim Kalka can write interestingly about almost anything... more »
Essays & Opinions
Whose bohemia? Ida Nettleship married the painter Augustus John, had five children, competed with his 21-year-old muse, and went unmentioned in his memoir... more »
Articles of Note
Jonathan Haidt is famous for explaining how liberals and conservatives think. Now he's wagering that social psychology can calm the campus culture war... more »
New Books
What's the meaning of red? It's the first color. It has the most powerful poetic and aesthetic associations. It warns, prohibits, condemns... more »
Essays & Opinions
A.E. Housman was a classicist-poet and voice of England. He was gaunt, gray, fond of isolation. For fun he wrote caustic takedowns of other scholars... more »
Articles of Note
You probably know of Charles and Ray Eames for their furniture design. But they also made more than 125 films. Why? “To get across an idea”... more »
New Books
For Terry Eagleton, culture is “the opium of the intelligentsia.” To understand this, along with his other epigrams, consider his anti-philosophical stance... more »
Essays & Opinions
Literature enriches the public sphere but speaks most powerfully in private. Andrew O’Hagan asks: What future does literature have in an age drenched in social media?... more »
Articles of Note
As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “The intellect is a muscle; it must be exercised.” But that exercise varies. Consider the reading habits of book critics... more »
New Books
At least since Orwell, bad writing has been linked with bad politics. But is good writing really a panacea for social, economic, legal, and political ills?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Neuroscientists working on the “hard problem” of consciousness may be doomed to fail. But there is meaning — even pleasure — in the Sisyphean task... more »