Dec. 12, 2024 | Where did Annie Ernaux first confront the themes central to her writing — class conflict, shame, ambition, imagination, the politics of knowledge? At the library... more »
Dec. 11, 2024 | The death of Peter Schjeldahl was the end not just of a person but of a whole approach to writing about art... more »
Dec. 10, 2024 | We know about Big Data, but it’s weather forecasts, shipping confirmations, and phone notifications — Little Data — that are killing us... more »
Dec. 9, 2024 | Dante’s revenge. His Hell, in The Divine Comedy, is populated almost exclusively with 13-century Florentines... more »
Dec. 6, 2024 | When progress was glamorous. In the early 20th century, imagining a marvelous future was a cultural norm... more »
Dec. 5, 2024 | AI and democracy. Had early technologists paid attention to John Dewey, we’d be in a much better place. Evgeny Morozov explains... more »
Dec. 4, 2024 | Literature professors gave up too easily on the language of the true, the beautiful, and the good, ceding it to traditionalists and provocateurs... more »
Dec. 3, 2024 | “In search of solid ground, any number of artists have opted to return to first principles: technique, color, and, above all else, visual pleasure”... more »
Dec. 2, 2024 | Thirty years ago, Sven Birkerts derided digital reading. He was dismissed as a curmudgeonly Luddite, but he was right... more »
Nov. 29, 2024 | An array of contradictory modern movements claims the mantle of decolonization, seeking moral authority from the now-distant 20th century ... more »
Nov. 28, 2024 | “Appreciationgiving” doesn’t have the same ring to it but might be a more philosophically accurate approach to the holiday... more »
Nov. 27, 2024 | Whether cancel culture is a moral panic or a genuine scourge, are the words and deeds of American colleges students really so consequential?... more »
Nov. 26, 2024 | In place of the the monastic cell of the Middle Ages, Renaissance-era scholars had the studiolo — a place to converse with the dead... more »
Nov. 25, 2024 | The Duolingo delusion: It’s fun — but absurd — to think that five minutes of language-learning a day will make us fluent... more »
Nov. 22, 2024 | Barre, Pilates, the Alexander technique: Is our quest for straighter spines a moral panic or a legitimate concern over back pain?... more »
Nov. 21, 2024 | The Magic Mountain is a novel of ideas, yes, but also a fairy-tale of illness and health, waking life and dream, love and pedagogy... more »
Nov. 20, 2024 | Art is about selection and omission. Melville goes on and on about whales; another writer would sum it up with “etcetera”... more »
Nov. 19, 2024 | “When the world’s most influential, best-funded exhibitions are dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices, are those voices still marginalized?”... more »
Nov. 18, 2024 | Democracy dies in darkness? Journalists’ aspiration to save democracy is counterproductive, argues Yascha Mounk... more »
Nov. 15, 2024 | Modern museums are designed to focus attention. But now our attention is fractured, and our art is changing... more »
Nov. 14, 2024 | The hard problem of dark comedy. “When I laugh with Céline, is my open mouth a gate to the Holocaust?” Michael Clune explains... more »
Nov. 13, 2024 | We live in the age of the internet novel, with its dispassionate, deadening style and lack of formal innovation... more »
Nov. 12, 2024 | To calm the identity wars, don’t underestimate the power of thinking in the third person. Kwame Anthony Appiah explains... more »
Nov. 11, 2024 | Margaret Fuller had “a predetermination to eat this big universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory”... more »
Nov. 8, 2024 | At the age of 10, Henri Bergson was left alone in Paris — amid violence, destruction, and the fall of the Second French Empire... more »