May 30, 2017 | Of all the biographers who have written about Hemingway, not one was a woman. Now comes Mary Dearborn, immune to the writer's hairy-chested legend... more »
May 29, 2017 | What is a library? If you think it's just a place where society stores books, then you have a dangerously impoverished view of what knowledge can be... more »
May 27, 2017 | Einstein hated beets. Hitchcock wouldn't eat eggs. Colson Whitehead can't stand ice cream. We are what we eat, but what's the significance of what we don't eat?... more »
May 26, 2017 | Fifty years after her genteel verse graced the Yale Younger Poets series, Adrienne Rich had become a dissident. She hadn’t exactly chosen poetry in the first place... more »
May 25, 2017 | Martin Luther, unfiltered. He lived in a bachelor’s chaos and hated Jews, papists, and Calvinists, among others. Then he married a runaway nun who brewed excellent beer... more »
May 24, 2017 | There will be cats. Murakami novels feature felines, detective heroes, and creepy sex. Readers are so hooked on the formula that the variations hardly matter... more »
May 23, 2017 | For modern interpreters, Greek tragedy boils down to lessons of power — how to get and keep it. And sexual politics, of course... more »
May 22, 2017 | Imagination, idealism, an urge for self-transcendence: Why prominent intellectuals have been so willing to support terrible regimes ... more »
May 20, 2017 | Graduate school is unkind to mind and body. To retain some health, go on dates. Have sex. Come to think of it, the world of online dating is a lot like to the academic job market... more »
May 19, 2017 | The Passion of Michel Foucault. He was a surrealist, masochist, militant, Maoist, reformist, structuralist, comrade, and lover. He was also suicide-obsessed and hard to ignore... more »
May 18, 2017 | Veronica Forrest-Thomson wrote one volume of criticism before dying at 27. Her ideas are so central that we’ve lost sight of her... more »
May 17, 2017 | Laura Kipnis goes in search of that rare thing, a memoir of midlife with no epiphanies and no life lessons. Nothing’s figured out and nothing gets better ... more »
May 16, 2017 | Though seen as titans of the literary left, Jameson, Eagleton, and Raymond Williams were more concerned with scholarship than with social intervention. Do they belong to the right?... more »
May 15, 2017 | Anger is a popular emotion. It is seen as an engine of progress, a check on injustice. But it also pollutes democratic politics and is of dubious value in both life and the law, says Martha Nussbaum... more »
May 13, 2017 | How cool is cool itself? Not very. It's been the preoccupation of less-than-first-rate writers, shoddy thinkers, and poseurs in general... more »
May 12, 2017 | Since Hegel, philosophers have declared the end of art, meaning that no further progress is possible. In that sense, it’s a good thing: Art is now free to be anything... more »
May 11, 2017 | Why do Japanese audiences adore Woody Allen films? Because Jewish humor has become a marker of elite sophistication... more »
May 10, 2017 | Writers once sought silence, exile, and cunning. Today they seek dialogue, community, and workshopping. What's lost when writers are afraid to stand alone?... more »
May 9, 2017 | Canons are formed through critical consensus. Yet consider this: None of the five most profitable films are canonical. You've probably seen them, but don't feel guilty... more »
May 8, 2017 | Satan's emissary, cunning fox, cold-blooded destroyer: That's the conventional view of Machiavelli. But was his advice in The Prince really meant to be followed?... more »
May 6, 2017 | Edgar Allan Poe is known for his supernatural horror and detective stories. But in his final major work, Eureka, he turned to cosmology — and was uncannily prescient... more »
May 5, 2017 | Art is rooted in emotions. So what happens when algorithms are able to understand and manipulate human emotions better than Mozart, Picasso, or Shakespeare? ... more »
May 4, 2017 | Nostalgia used to be considered a disease; causes, symptoms, and cures were debated by doctors. Now it's a cultural condition, but no less dangerous... more »
May 3, 2017 | "As a writer, my principal observation about why other writers fail is that they are in too much of a hurry," says Malcolm Gladwell. "I don’t think you can write a good book in two years."... more »
May 2, 2017 | That $1,200 margarita? Blame late capitalism. A $400 internet-connected juicer? Also late capitalism. Fancy lettuces? You guessed it. It's the buzzword that explains everything — or nothing... more »
