March 24, 2023 | On Janet Malcolm’s memoir: “There is a difference, after all — at times, a contradiction — between journalistic integrity and artistic integrity”... more »
March 23, 2023 | The paradox of rootedness. Genealogies connect us with the past, but they are also contingent exercises in historical interpretation... more »
March 22, 2023 | “If the good news is that we are doomed, the better news is that we can’t do much about it”... more »
March 21, 2023 | Obsessed with precociousness, our literary culture overlooks two late masterworks from Cormac McCarthy... more »
March 20, 2023 | Picasso in Paris. He was everything that made French authorities suspicious: rich, famous, unfathomable, uncontrollable, cosmopolitan... more »
March 17, 2023 | Charlatan or a genius? Jacob Taubes — rabbi, sociologist, philosopher — lived on the line between confabulation and creative thought... more »
March 16, 2023 | “Much of what feels like mastery in adult life is actually the avoidance of a challenge.” Adam Gopnik explains... more »
March 15, 2023 | It’s tempting to take sides on literary marriages. But with so much pain, abuse, and mental ill health, often both partners are victims... more »
March 14, 2023 | Jenny Odell’s new book produces novel juxtapositions, but to what end? It is “an attempt to cultivate profundity in the absence of an argument”... more »
March 13, 2023 | Hegel compared women to plants; Nietzsche said they “delayed human development.” How to explain philosophy’s dogged exclusion of women?... more »
March 10, 2023 | The cost of cathedrals. Architectural ambition demanded the selling of indulgences, financialized cults and relics, and strange marketing campaigns... more »
March 9, 2023 | Bemoaning breast enlargement, a philosopher makes the case for the “unmodified” body. But what of tattoos, cochlear implants, or even cutting one’s hair?... more »
March 8, 2023 | Ballet is full of contradictions. For one, the dancer must put forth every effort to make it all look effortless... more »
March 7, 2023 | Modern society suffers from a wide array of social problems. Would simply hanging out with friends be a big step in the right direction?... more »
March 6, 2023 | When surrealism moved to New York. Masson, Dalí, Ernst, Breton were involved in “one of the greatest cultural exchanges in modern history”... more »
March 5, 2023 | Young Darryl Pinckney was caught between druggy late nights and the snobbish sensibilities of literary apprenticeship... more »
March 3, 2023 | Late bloomer. Amy Clampitt was unknown to the literary world in 1978, when she had her first poem published. She was 58... more »
March 2, 2023 | Jeff Sharlet’s America is “a world of apocalyptic pulsings and unnatural peril.” Behind it lies grief, rage, and bad-faith histrionics... more »
March 1, 2023 | Janet Malcolm had an unrivaled knack for finding the incriminating flaw. In her gaze, everyone is under suspicion... more »
Feb. 28, 2023 | We’ve radically simplified Adam Smith’s rich vision. Blame Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, and George Stigler... more »
Feb. 27, 2023 | “All the world’s knowledge in one convenient bookcase.” The sales pitch for the $1,500 Encyclopaedia Britannica was aspirational ... more »
Feb. 25, 2023 | The manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” survived the storming of the Bastille and was later smuggled out of Germany just before the Nazis took over ... more »
Feb. 24, 2023 | On forgetting: “To remember the details of every action is to invite madness, to paralyze our brains and our communities with memory” ... more »
Feb. 23, 2023 | Robert Pinsky: “Poetry’s great mission is the pursuit of truth on a human scale, bound by the measure of each person’s mortal voice” ... more »
Feb. 22, 2023 | Is human intelligence our crowning glory as a species, or is it a liability — the source of existential angst and our talent for self-destruction?... more »