Dec. 3, 2022 | Yes, T.S. Eliot’s prolonged and unconsummated relationship with Elizabeth Hale was crucial. But that doesn’t mean she was a “hidden muse” ... more »
Dec. 2, 2022 | James Gillray, the “Prince of Caricatura,” spent long hours ridiculing the sexual and gastronomic excesses of the British royal family ... more »
Dec. 1, 2022 | In the work of T.J. Clark, art history matches the philosophical ambition of artists like Cézanne, Pissarro, and Matisse ... more »
Nov. 30, 2022 | "Can We Survive Technology?" John von Neumann posed the question in 1955. We still await an answer... more »
Nov. 29, 2022 | “No matter how shit you think your life is, there are many millions in recent history who had it a lot, lot shitter” ... more »
Nov. 28, 2022 | In his 30s, A.N. Wilson gossiped, slept around, and drank with other literary journalists “on a positively Slavic scale”... more »
Nov. 26, 2022 | Beware “storification” — our overreliance on storytelling conventions to understand the world around us ... more »
Nov. 25, 2022 | Outside the delusions of humanities professors, teaching and writing about Marlowe and Austen do not amount to radical politics... more »
Nov. 24, 2022 | The descendants of Thomas Henry Huxley inherited not only his flair for argument but also his affinity for sweeping questions ... more »
Nov. 23, 2022 | The hidden past of an underappreciated instrument. The banjo's African roots have been neglected or misrepresented ... more »
Nov. 22, 2022 | The relationship between musicians and critics ranges from affable to antagonistic to utterly bizarre... more »
Nov. 21, 2022 | Few things generate more powerful legends than martyrdom and massacre, and that is certainly true of the Paris Commune... more »
Nov. 19, 2022 | The new beach read. It’s less a pulpy work of summer escapism — and more a musing on an evolving ecological disaster ... more »
Nov. 18, 2022 | Franz Kafka, aphorist. His work in this genre is low-key, discreetly funny, and extremely strange ... more »
Nov. 17, 2022 | What's captivating about Dylan's songwriting is the strange mix of care and carelessness. Not so in his prose ... more »
Nov. 16, 2022 | Shirley Hazzard's style: a thick maze of foreshadowing and indirection, inevitability and destiny, all-knowing and far away... more »
Nov. 15, 2022 | 1888 was a tragic year for Nietzsche. His mind was unraveling just as his reputation was starting to rise... more »
Nov. 14, 2022 | “To wrestle with the unsavory aspects of ancient literature is to do the hard work of self-examination” ... more »
Nov. 12, 2022 | Arthur Miller, after the fall. His great theme — the ease with which a life can be discarded — became his fate ... more »
Nov. 11, 2022 | The work of the critic is to be decisive, knowledgeable, authoritative. Emily Ogden is not most critics ... more »
Nov. 10, 2022 | Hayek and The Road to Serfdom. The Austrian economist's iconic book is the work of someone who felt left out... more »
Nov. 9, 2022 | The Holocaust poses impossible questions for history, including: What to make of perpetrators who acted in contradictory ways?... more »
Nov. 8, 2022 | It was 1978 and Haruki Murakami was watching a baseball game when he suddenly realized: I think I can write a novel ... more »
Nov. 7, 2022 | A late-life gift from the greatest living songwriter, Bob Dylan's annotated playlist reveals a lot about music and even more about him ... more »
Nov. 5, 2022 | Schiller's smells. Did the philosopher and poet really insist on writing within sniffing distance of rotten apples? ... more »