Feb. 9, 2024 | Barbara Johnson’s concept of muteness envy is the result when a culture needs a way to feel power and powerlessness at once... more »
Feb. 8, 2024 | A way of arguing — breathless, declaratory, aggressive, aggrieved — has taken root in the university. Call it the hyperbolic style in American academe... more »
Feb. 7, 2024 | The Free Press is a vital journalistic corrective to progressive consensus, says Jonathan Chait — but its politics are an overcorrection... more »
Feb. 6, 2024 | The art world is crawling with counterfeits. That creates not only confusion but also opportunity. Consider the "missing" Basquiats... more »
Feb. 5, 2024 | What is art for? Our answers are aimed at justifying art’s existence. But none of that is why we care about it... more »
Feb. 2, 2024 | Given its sub-disciplines and broad range of schools and methods, Jonathan Kramnick poses a question: What unites literary studies?... more »
Feb. 1, 2024 | What to make of Anthony Hecht, whose erudite and elegant writing produced bitter, creepy, sexist poetry?... more »
Jan. 31, 2024 | For Andrea Long Chu, writing is like flirting. “A lot of people think that when you flirt, you are trying to get the person to like you. This is wrong.”... more »
Jan. 30, 2024 | The divisive Alan Watts. Was he a sophisticated distiller of Eastern philosophy — or an unlettered, alcoholic dilettante?... more »
Jan. 29, 2024 | Is the distinction between large language models and human creativity one of degree or fundamental difference?... more »
Jan. 26, 2024 | Sontag, seriousness, and the freedom to be funny. Why writing a novel, The Volcano Lover, felt so transgressive and wild... more »
Jan. 25, 2024 | Tyranny of the QR code. Digitization is killing paper playbills and theater tickets — and our memories of Broadway will suffer... more »
Jan. 24, 2024 | British explorer Alastair Humphreys exchanges the Arctic ice for his local neighborhood. Cue the “microadventure”... more »
Jan. 23, 2024 | AI and literary style. Adam Kirsch wonders: Will we appreciate writing that is aesthetically coherent but chronologically incoherent?... more »
Jan. 22, 2024 | Why write criticism? For Greil Marcus, it’s to achieve the effects of art — the same sense of mystery, awe, and surprise... more »
Jan. 19, 2024 | What is it like to be an animal? The question has driven philosophical treatises — as well as the donning of a $23,000 human-sized wolf suit... more »
Jan. 18, 2024 | The Algorithm: Not since the discovery of the libido or the printing press has something loomed so large... more »
Jan. 17, 2024 | With major elections looming, a moral panic has swept the globe: social media empowers populism. Is there anything to that?... more »
Jan. 16, 2024 | What’s most difficult about Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is finding the time to read it. Ryan Ruby explains... more »
Jan. 15, 2024 | The evolution of celebrity analysis: Madonna-ology was based on critical theory, Taylor Swift studies is concerned with teaching skills... more »
Jan. 12, 2024 | Flaubert’s solitude. In 1851, he asked rhetorically: “Am I really to have a goal other than Art itself?”... more »
Jan. 11, 2024 | Once you enter Guy Davenport’s labyrinth of learning and imagination, you never get out. John Jeremiah Sullivan explains... more »
Jan. 10, 2024 | “No one can really believe in an apology until after it happens,” says Agnes Callard. “That’s the telltale mark of a miracle”... more »
Jan. 9, 2024 | “Critique is not against reason; it is the very practice of reason.” Peter Gordon lays to rest some misconceptions of critical theory... more »
Jan. 8, 2024 | Tom Wolfe was less an inventive journalist or mediocre novelist − though he was both – than a grand theorist of American life... more »