Arts & Letters Daily search results for “william james” (265)
2019-12-28 | For Allen Ginsberg, mescaline brought ecstasy. For Walter Benjamin, philosophical irritation. For William James, vomiting and diarrhea more »
2018-05-26 | A memorable dinner at the White House. William Styron and James Baldwin attended. J.D. Salinger, a budding recluse, declined. Mary Hemingway bored JFK immensely more »
2010-01-01 | William James: just about the only philosopher who didnâ?'t end up as either a pettifogging nit-picker or an overbearing egomaniac with delusions of genius more »
2014-11-05 | Our bladders, our destinies. William James called free will 'the whole sting and excitement? of life. Can something so central hinge on having to pee? more »
2020-02-29 | Morbidly depressed, William James hung on not through intellectualism, but by making the value of his life a hypothesis more »
2020-05-11 | William James’s critics mistake his pragmatism for simple relativism. He endures because he addressed the meaning of life more »
2020-12-15 | A spate of books peddles philosophers, from Socrates to William James, as gurus of the good life. Try Spinoza more »
2018-01-09 | William James saw himself as a popularizer, not an originator. He was harsh about his own work: “No one could be more disgusted than I at the sight of the book” more »
2021-06-03 | Coming out of a long depression, William James made a study of habits. The healthiest ones, he concluded, are those we manage to break more »
2019-10-28 | On a February night in 1965, William F. Buckley squared off against James Baldwin. For Buckley, it was his most satisfying debate. For Baldwin, not so much more »
2020-09-11 | When William James gave up on religion, he went in search of a new avenue to save his life. Can his approach help you save your own? more »
2016-01-12 | In awe of his older brother, William, Henry James declared himself inadequate — to his family, as well as to the times. It improved his writing markedly more »
2018-10-15 | When his aged father and newborn son died within a few years of each other, William James took an interest in "ghosts and clairvoyances and raps and messages from spirits" more »
2012-08-20 | Maurice Sendak had many loves: William Blake, Proust, Mozart, Schubert, noses. He was passionate about noses more »
2018-01-04 | Biographers: Henry James feared them as predators. James Joyce ridiculed them as “biografiends.” Saul Bellow compared them to coffin-makers more »
2014-01-22 | Junkie, misogynist, murderer, artist: William S. Burroughs searched for an identity that didn't arouse his own self-contempt more »
2022-11-18 | William Godwin believed himself immune to the tumults and desires experienced by others. Then he met Mary Wollstonecraft more »
2014-07-28 | Sex workers, snipers, silver-gelatin photos: The creepy, fascinating, and remarkably prolific life of William T. Vollmann more »
2022-03-12 | William Deresiewicz: NPR has become a smug, certain, and self-righteous bastion of ideological force-feeding more »
2018-01-17 | “William, you’re very boring.” Empson, in the middle of a poetry reading, ignored the heckler. “William, you are very boring,” she said again. It was his wife more »
2014-01-31 | ?Crankish courage.' That's what Mary McCarthy saw in William S. Burroughs. Others saw depravity and an endearingly crotchety flair more »
2020-05-18 | Clive James was perhaps Philip Larkin's best reader. But his Larkin is a projection — the poet that James wanted to be more »
2014-09-26 | So we give up the pleasures of entertainment for the seriousness of art? Not even Henry James would agree more »
2014-03-27 | James Whistler relished attention and dressed accordingly: monocle, fawn-colored frock coat, patent-leather shoes with pink bows, elaborate coiffure more »
2016-01-09 | All roads of American modernism didn't run through James Laughlin, but many of them intersected there more »
2016-03-01 | The reality hunger of Henry James. Misunderstood as a literary traditionalist, he wrote autobiographies that anticipated Knausgaard more »
2013-09-26 | Indiscriminately superstitious, William Gaddis believed in beautiful women, the zodiac, and his own talent. His obscurity proved to be part of his appeal more »
2010-01-01 | '"Omit needless words," William Strunk''s advice in the 1918 edition of The Elements of Style, means less and less the more you think about it' more »
2015-06-06 | What could have brought William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer together in friendship? For starters, both detested Gore Vidal more »
2018-10-11 | William Hazlitt’s style, in the early 19th century, was strikingly modern. So were his challenges as a freelance writer: urgent deadlines and financial struggle more »
2018-12-29 | William T. Vollmann’s 1,300-page book on climate change is overloaded with statistics, footnotes, and citations. Buried within is an intellectual autobiography more »
2021-12-03 | William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale might have failed as a philosophy of education, but it succeeded as a genre more »
2013-08-24 | If there is an American character, its essence is a longing for freedom, happiness, escape. William T. Vollmann on the ungridded life more »
2013-12-24 | Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gore Vidal: Why have so many writers been so attached to Tangier? more »
2011-01-01 | William F. Buckley long ago faulted academe for its failure to engage unfashionable topics. Is ignoring anti-Semitism the latest example? more »
2017-10-24 | What makes male characters in Jane Austen so sexy? It has something to do with the taming of the masculine principle. William Deresiewicz explains more »
2020-03-30 | William Blake's flint cottage, Rudyard Kipling's stone manor: What role do houses play in the lives of creative people? more »
2018-06-08 | Robert Penn Warren and William Faulkner promoted a distinct ideology of the South. For black Southern intellectuals, things weren’t so straightforward more »
2020-08-19 | There was no better chronicler of white guilt than William Faulkner. It was his literary strength — and his moral failing more »
2021-08-03 | Anaïs Nin, William Burroughs, Henry Miller, and George Barker all partook in a struggling-artist tradition: writing literary erotica more »
2012-08-19 | William Manchester's death left his Churchill biography unfinished. Enter an unknown journalist. "If I didn't do it, it wasn't going to get done" more »
2012-08-16 | Is he really losing it? William Ian Miller says he's old and infirm. But his whines, kvetches, and oy veys are fooling no one more »
2013-03-20 | William Styron's letters are a catalog of phobias and preoccupations. The latter includes money, race relations, and sex. The chief phobia: literary critics more »
2013-06-17 | The rage of William Gaddis. Rankled by reviewers and interview requests, the novelist wanted nothing more than to be left alone. He succeeded, mostly more »
2013-07-02 | William Lane Craig ? evangelical Christian, philosopher of religion ? made his name debating atheists. He's good, but is his a valid philosophy? more »
2014-01-20 | Proust was not a neuroscientist, Jane Austen was not a game theorist, and the two-cultures problem isn't a problem. William Deresiewicz explains more »
2010-01-01 | '"I''m a misfit," David Gelernter says. Yes, and a fiercely independent one, like his hero, the visionary prophet, William Blake' more »
2011-01-01 | 'William Dalrymple is the literary don of Delhi. The secret to his success? He chews up multiculturalism. "It''s hard being an Orientalist these days"' more »
2017-04-01 | William Empson detested the “horrible Frenchmen” of Deconstruction. Yet Empson himself, author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, anticipated many of their ideas more »
2017-05-10 | For 50 years, William F. Buckley Jr. policed the boundaries of conservatism, casting out extremists, bigots, kooks, anti-Semites, and racists. Or so he thought more »
2011-01-01 | In 1932, William Shirer, a reporter in Paris, was abruptly fired from his job at the Chicago Tribune. On a whim, he took off for Berlin more »
2018-06-14 | When a monk hangs out with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, what results is the work of Sylvester Houédard, Benedictine beatnik more »
2019-05-29 | John Williams put a lot of himself into his most famous protagonist, William Stoner, a lackluster professor and difficult man more »
2020-06-22 | Until 1834 there was no general name for those who studied the material world. Then the English philosopher William Whewell coined one: scientist more »
2021-10-11 | In the English village of Ockham, around 1287, a boy named William was born. His razor enabled science to blossom more »
2020-12-16 | William Gaddis was cynical about America, wishing it were more like Costa Rica. But he never lost hope entirely more »
2013-01-01 | Down and out in Italy. Spendthrift and broke, James Joyce turned to journalism, film, tweed, fireworks, and fending off creditors more »
2014-05-24 | How might the next James Baldwin be constrained by the possibility of his book's being stamped "Trigger Warning: Child Abuse"? more »
2013-01-09 | William Styron saw the irony: ?Curious to think that a slender volume about lunacymay provide a meal ticket for my superannuated years? more »
2015-12-09 | William Carlos Williams and the C-Suite. In an attempt to develop empathetic students, business schools are teaching literature. Does that work? more »
2015-07-03 | The midcentury male writer: angry, bighearted, loving, hungry for fame, fiercely competitive, tragic, drink-soaked. William Styron knew all too well more »
2011-01-01 | 'Thank you, WikiLeaks! U.S. diplomat William Burns''s account of a Dagestani wedding has the President of Chechnya, his gold-plated automatic stuck down his jeans' more »
2010-01-01 | William Golding knew his own capacity for evil, and he was uneasy. "I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature" more »
2018-11-22 | The greatest book ever written about the theater? The Season by William Goldman, who died recently. What makes it great? Its bluntness more »
2018-10-09 | William Dudley Pelley was a novelist and screenwriter. He was also “Chief” of the Silver Shirts, a 15,000-member Nazi-copycat group more »
2019-04-04 | Prose over everything. William Gass’s indomitable lyricism obliterates the plot and ideas in his works. To read him is to surrender to style more »
2022-08-18 | With his utilitarian approach to population ethics, William MacAskill makes the moral case for settlement beyond Earth. That should raise an eyebrow more »
2020-08-25 | Satirized, pranked, mocked — even pelted with garbage — the Victorian poet William McGonagall was famous for his terrible art more »
2020-10-20 | "A grabby talky disorderly inferno of the spirit." William Gaddis's J R was almost comically ahead of its time more »
2020-11-28 | William S. Burroughs didn't care much for music. Yet for a generation of musicians, he was a singular influence more »
2014-06-05 | The paradoxical politics of William Burroughs. An enemy of the left, he dreamt of public-works projects. Thus his nickname: Sultan of Sewers more »
2014-06-14 | Tastes in physiques change over time. William the Conqueror's girth was mocked, but in 14th-century Paris, women strove for ?beautiful loins and big bottoms? more »
2013-05-03 | For William Gaddis, there was never enough research, never enough time to spend on a single book. I ?must get everything in. Everything? more »
2014-03-28 | Perils of the author interview. William Ecenbargar got along with John Updike ? until recognizing himself, slightly fictionalized, in The New Yorker more »
2012-08-16 | At National Review, William Rusher was "the other Bill." But in many ways it's Rusher, not Buckley, who shaped contemporary conservatism more »
2015-02-09 | No one can doubt the power of William Blake's visual imagination and the brilliance of his engravings. So why are his images overshadowed by his words? more »
2014-11-01 | As an art critic, William Hazlitt racked up enemies. He was unsparing. But what ruined his reputation was an affair with a woman half his age more »
2014-11-15 | William McPherson has a Pulitzer Prize and no money. He isn't wretched-of-the-earth poor, but he's poor. Here's how he reached that status more »
2010-01-01 | Writing is learned by imitation, says William Zinsser. Bach needed a model, Picasso needed a model, and when it comes to writing, we all need models more »
2010-01-01 | 'William Butler Yeats''s work touched the greatest discoveries in modern physics and psychology. But he was also a poet of violence and horror' more »
2010-01-01 | Anatomist William Harvey claimed in the 17th century that the uterus is a second seat of intelligence. Odd, but perhaps he was onto something more »
2010-01-01 | William Safire, language maven whose penchant for barbed and memorable phrases first showed itself in speeches he wrote for the Nixon White House, is dead more »
2016-06-29 | The unlikely William Empson. A socialist who revered the British monarchy, a bisexual bohemian banished from academe, a genius more »
2015-09-24 | William Styron once wrote that being a young novelist was like being a rock star. Ironic, because Styron’s own public persona was so boring more »
2015-11-17 | William Blake has had many guises, in life and after: radical visionary poet, engraver and illustrator, Marxist protester, London dreamer, psychological mythmaker, pioneer of tantric sex more »
2011-01-01 | 'William McGonagall''s invincible delusion - that he was a theatrical and poetic genius without equal since the time of Shakespeare - merits not disdain, but sympathy and respect' more »
2015-05-22 | William Zinsser, who died last week, knew how to live well and write well. His advice about endings: "When you're ready to stop, stop" more »
2019-09-25 | Widely dismissed, William Blake managed to capture the heart of one wealthy, credulous benefactor. It helped that they shared a passion for séances more »
2020-08-10 | In his work, William Faulkner could not escape the Civil War’s aftermath or its meaning. Neither can we more »
2022-03-07 | The Organization Man made William H. Whyte famous. But he spent most of his career thinking about cities more »
2016-10-22 | When Clive James met David Hockney, they discussed Picasso. Hockney had so much to say, recalls James. "I still count this as one of the great conversations of my life" more »
2013-06-05 | What ails American literary culture? Excessive good manners. Clive James has a suggestion: Bring back the hatchet job more »
2022-02-01 | James Dean was a “boring, tacky little boy” who shamelessly copied technique from Marlon Brando more »
2013-12-26 | James Joyce had an intimate relationship with scandal: He courted it, incorporated it, and transformed it in distinctive ways more »
2012-08-16 | Literature's most tyrannical estate. James Joyce didn't care for biographers, coining "biografiend." But he has nothing on his irascible grandson more »
2013-06-07 | You can't blame James Agee for being competitive with Walker Evans. The photographer slept with two of Agee's wives more »
2022-09-16 | As Cass Sunstein's books get slighter, they're published more frequently. He is the James Patterson of public policy more »
2012-08-18 | Clive James insists that he's not about to die. In fact, the man with every illness in the book is translating The Divine Comedy more »
2012-05-20 | Is James Wood abandoning criticism? 'It's tiresome to hand down judgments all day. You want to do something else with the language? more »
2017-02-25 | Sleuthing word origins has become a game that anyone can play. Now the old founts of linguistic innovation are falling. Poor James Joyce more »
2016-06-14 | The stories of Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens are accounts of how we come to un-believe more »
2015-11-30 | There is always a need for wise, omnivorous critics, advocates of complexity over simplicity. Clive James is among the best of them more »
2016-01-18 | Since Clive James learned he had terminal leukemia, he's released six books, all reckoning with death. His latest is the most important more »
2016-02-22 | Henry James died in 1916. Almost immediately the battle to control his reputation -- and keep secret his complex sexuality - was underway more »
2010-01-01 | 'James Joyce''s Ulysses : more venerated than read because it has been so long held in academic captivity. Declan Kiberd wants to set it free' more »
2018-06-16 | The gazillion books and articles, the conferences, symposia, and reading groups — all a waste of time? A scholar breaks up with James Joyce more »
2018-07-06 | A campaign against humanity. Invalided from civil service for alcoholism, Flann O’Brien turned his ire on publishers, television producers, and James Joyce more »
2019-11-29 | Clive James is dead. The critic, poet, and incomparable wit, who seemed incapable of writing a limp sentence, was 80 more »
2020-05-14 | When Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson met, they debated the nature of fiction and griped about — what else? — money more »
2022-07-09 | In December, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched into orbit. Its first year in service could revolutionize astronomy more »
2022-12-02 | James Gillray, the “Prince of Caricatura,” spent long hours ridiculing the sexual and gastronomic excesses of the British royal family more »
2022-03-01 | "A pile of dung teeming with worms" - James Joyce's reception in the Soviet Union was not a kind one more »
2012-08-16 | Fast cars, fast boats, fast women: The life of Dmitri Nabokov - a 6 foot 5, stentorian-voiced child of exile - could resemble a James Bond film more »
2012-08-18 | How did the Master's reputation survive the culture wars? He became a shape-shifter, a worldly, gay, feminist. Henry James: He's just like us! more »
2012-08-16 | John Updike thought James Agee was feckless, inadequate, and rambling. Perhaps he was right, but isn't there something magnificent about Agee's amateurism? more »
2015-02-06 | Yeats called Poe's poetry ?vulgar and commonplace?; Henry James called it ?decidedly primitive.' Poe was simply too far ahead of his time more »
2014-02-26 | James McNeill Whistler viewed the artist's life as a battle ? with critics, patrons, philistines. 'There is nothing like a good fight! It clears the air? more »
2010-01-01 | With Eric Rohmer, as with Mozart, Austen, James, and Proust, art was not just about life. It was about discovery and design and reasoning with chaos more »
2010-01-01 | Was a golf ball ever sliced into potato chips? Well, says a skeptical Clive James, suppose a golf course lies near a potato field more »
2019-09-16 | James Bennet makes party chat; an MSNBC anchor deplores "cancel culture"; John Podhoretz complains about Twitter: a Bari Weiss book party more »
2018-04-10 | James Wood was well matched to the literary style of the 1990s — aesthetics were in, politics out. Now things have changed. Does Wood still matter? more »
2018-08-13 | Pentecostal churches were hellfire preaching, general pandemonium — and music. They were where Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and James Brown learned to move a crowd more »
2022-06-08 | James Patterson has published 10 books this year, and four more will appear this month. So many questions more »
2021-07-05 | In a new thriller written with James Patterson, Bill Clinton reveals such a naked fantasy version of himself that you can feel embarrassed for him more »
2013-11-09 | William T. Vollmann writes in a dress and wig. Why? "Women are the ones who give life." Should he win the Nobel, he?ll give the prize money to prostitutes more »
2013-04-24 | Inside the William Gaddis archive. The relics of the novelist's reclusive and complex life include a zebra skin, a player-piano roll, and a drab pair of women's shoes more »
2014-11-27 | Noah Berlatsky spent the past two years working on a book about William Marston, creator of Wonder Woman. Now a soul-crushing reality check: Jill Lepore beat him to it more »
2017-12-15 | “I write because I hate,” said William Gass, who died last week. Anger at his bigoted father and alcoholic mother shaped a singular philosophical vision more »
2018-11-24 | William H. Gass compiled a final collection near the end of his life, resigned to the fact that his real legacy would be buried by the fickle winds of literary opinion more »
2020-11-27 | "The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important,” said William Faulkner, as if he knew his personal failings would diminish his professional reputation more »
2016-09-29 | Mocked in the movie Aladdin, William F. Buckley’s singular style of speaking merits attention. Like his ideas, it was heavily influenced by the Spanish language more »
2015-11-26 | On the floor of an old factory in Boston: fungus, dirt, and scat. On the walls: 8,000 books, a record of William James's obsession with the supernatural more »
2018-09-26 | In 1921, William Faulkner went to work at the post office. He was comically ill-suited for the job. “The damndest postmaster the world has ever seen” more »
2020-04-30 | William F. Cody — Buffalo Bill — has long shaped Americans’ idealistic sense of the frontier. But look more closely: His biography is full of darkness more »
2014-08-12 | James Bond had much in common with his creator, Ian Fleming: Sex, drinking, smoking, cruelty, vanity, and a fondness for Jamaica more »
2013-07-10 | Henry James and the Jews. Yes, the novelist was prone to clumsy analogies ? likening Jews to worms, monkeys, squirrels, ants. No, he was not an anti-Semite more »
2013-10-16 | Three takes on the Inferno: Clive James sucks the life out of the text; Mary Jo Bang makes scholars squirm. Then there's Dan Brown more »
2013-10-26 | James Wolcott, pugilist par excellence, has gone soft. He says he's ?becoming a more loving, caring, dulcimer-strumming individual.' Let's hope not more »
2014-02-14 | Exile can be inspirational, says James Wood. So many exiles are novelists, chess players, and intellectuals. But there is no place like home more »
2012-08-16 | James Joyce was a raconteur and a barfly. He wrote pornographic letters to Nora, the "man-killer," and preferred a low figure of speech, the pun more »
2012-08-16 | Henry Luce and James Agee were an odd couple. The conservative Time publisher clashed with the rebellious, bohemian writer. Agee fantasized about shooting the boss more »
2015-03-11 | James Laughlin had exceptional taste and a knack for turning personal problems into aesthetic ones. In the end, he was undone by his insecurities more »
2014-11-22 | The Clive James voice: intensely serious yet self-mocking, grave but never solemn, highbrow but never snobby. And always gorgeously inventive more »
2010-01-01 | At the end, Somerset Maugham, who knew the likes of Henry James, Churchill, Dorothy Parker, and D.H. Lawrence, died raving like King Lear more »
2010-01-01 | 'Is America going to hell? Not so far as James Fallows is concerned: the country''s cycles of crisis and renewal are a source of its deep strength' more »
2015-09-26 | Clive James vowed not to reread Conrad. But he must, because no other writer so perceptively presaged our world of radicalism, terrorism, and idealism more »
2015-11-19 | Despairing witness, acerbic book reviewer, passé novelist: Who was James Baldwin? No one speaks about him as fluently as he did more »
2020-01-15 | James Wood’s work is stately and professorial, full of close readings. Then there’s the hackwork he wrote under a pseudonym more »
2020-02-14 | James Fetzer is a prolific philosopher of science — and an advocate for some of the strangest and most odious ideas of our time more »
2020-04-29 | Clive James and John Burnside could hardly be more different, except in this: Both are masters of appreciation and models of the poet/critic more »
2019-11-19 | James Wood’s transformation: Once fizzing with aphoristic insights, he now writes more carefully, often of aging, exile, and emotion more »
2020-06-08 | For James Wood, critics must always answer one fundamental question: “What’s at stake in this passage?” more »
2022-10-29 | James Bennet’s firing from The New York Times was a sorry affair marked by cowardice and midcareer risk management more »
2022-12-21 | Science magazine has chosen its “Breakthrough of the Year” — the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope more »
2021-11-12 | To E.O. Wilson, James Watson is “the Caligula of biology.” To Watson, Wilson is a mere stamp collector more »
2021-01-28 | Art of the zinger. In the delivery of a ringing - and withering - phrase, Clive James was without parallel more »
2016-12-01 | After being tried for dissent, William Blake rededicated himself to esoteric engravings. He suffered among acid fumes and copper dust, which might have been what killed him more »
2020-03-10 | In 1967, William Styron, a white novelist, fictively entered the mind of a black man. What would happen if The Confessions of Nat Turner appeared today? more »
2016-07-06 | What was it like to be edited by William Shawn? I'm appending “a few questions,” he told a writer of a New Yorker profile. There were 178 more »
2016-09-08 | William Empson had nothing more than a serious amateur's interest in Eastern art, but this was a man undeterred by lack of expertise. Thus The Face of the Buddha more »
2016-11-28 | Poets like John Clare and William Blake found meaning in trees. Now we know more about their secret lives -- they communicated via the mysterious “wood wide web” more »
2011-01-01 | 'The Locovore movement brings to mind William Morris and Arts and Crafts. His wallpaper and books didn''t stop the industrial revolution. But he left a legacy of beautiful things' more »
2018-10-22 | Russell Kirk was more littérateur than leader. But just think how different things might be had he, not William F. Buckley Jr., been the public face of conservativism more »
2018-09-17 | Maeve Brennan had lost it. She was sleeping next to a bathroom at The New Yorker and was giving away her money. All William Shawn would say was, “She’s a beautiful writer” more »
2018-01-24 | Obscurity is a common fate for writers. What’s curious about William Melvin Kelley is that, after the early acclaim passed, he kept at it, every day, never doubting himself more »
2016-08-09 | For four years, William Styron pushed his No. 2 pencil across the page, writing The Confessions of Nat Turner. He'd “unwittingly created one of the first politically incorrect texts of our time” more »
2011-01-01 | Ought the exploits of Christopher Columbus be the occasion to take a day off work? He had a lot of bad attiudes by our standards. But history is complicated, as William Connell explains more »
2016-03-02 | The manuscript of William Empson's The Face of the Buddha was thought to have vanished in a taxi in 1947. It's been found, and it's tremendous more »
2017-06-17 | In 1965 a young New Yorker writer’s story ideas were rejected, one after another by the editor. Finally he said, “Oranges.” “That’s very good,” replied William Shawn more »
2012-08-17 | I had suicidal thoughts, says Clive James. "They all promptly vanished the moment I was under real threat. There was a sudden urge to live" more »
2013-04-13 | A whiff of the mystical surrounds James Lovelock. But he is foremost a scientist, he insists. And science says the planet is too crowded more »
2013-07-06 | Prelude to the aftermath. These days Clive James, 72 and ill, slips into the past tense when speaking about himself. What you don't hear is self pity more »
2013-01-02 | James Wolcott, quantified. The critic is data-driven, tracking steps and stairs taken, hours slept, calories burned. Autobiography is a long flowchart more »
2013-01-13 | Oscar Wilde in America. One year, 15,000 miles, 140 stops. Henry James was not impressed: ?a fatuous fool, a tenth-rate cad, and an unclean beast? more »
2014-10-30 | James Burnham, a socialist, CIA agent, philosopher, and Cold Warrior, was a master analyst of oligarchy, in his day and ours more »
2014-12-27 | Witty, handsome, James ?J? Laughlin was hard to resist. But the publisher, poet, and anthologist, founder of New Directions, was deeply flawed more »
2010-01-01 | Reality TV has not only helped to debase the networks, it has even trashed the time-honored art of bad acting. James Wolcott explains more »
2010-01-01 | James Fallows survived China. If you think that is but a minor achievement, consider a few health and pollution facts about life in that bustling land more »
2010-01-01 | That racist domination was the true basis for the British Empire has been repeated so often we forget how deeply false it is. Enter historian James Belich more »
2016-09-14 | Clive James, bingewatcher. He's an incisive and discerning critic. But it's his affection for the abysmal that distinguishes his taste in television more »
2011-01-01 | Founded in 1857 to advance the "American idea," The Atlantic Monthly was an odd intellectual home for Henry James, a peripatetic expat who renounced his U.S. citizenship more »
2016-09-27 | Neither entirely Victorian nor modernist, Henry James sowed the seed of postmodern thought. He would be appalled by what it has become more »
2016-11-17 | Between the world of the university and that of magazines, cultural critics like James Wood, A.O. Scott, and Mark Greif search for their place more »
2015-04-07 | James Wood was saved by literature. Son of a minister who maintained a strict home, he found novels an invitation to think beyond the Gospels more »
2011-01-01 | This year I almost died, reveals Clive James. Had he done so, we would have lost a brilliant prose stylist, intellect, wit, and poet more »
2019-01-02 | James Watson in exile. More than a decade since his views on race and intelligence became public, he's been shunned but hasn't changed his mind more »
2019-01-30 | Marlon James misses the bygone era of bookish braggadocio. Think Norman Mailer and Philip Roth. “When did we get so nerdy?” more »
2018-07-27 | Handsome, smart, and devious, George Villiers ascended in King James I’s court. But his rise ended with sexual shenanigans and, it seems, murder more »
2017-09-20 | James Burnham, Trotskyist turned CIA operative, wasn't an unscrupulous shape-shifter. He was a committed activist who never tired of hawking himself more »
2022-10-13 | Langston Hughes, then Richard Wright, then James Baldwin. Did The New York Times cover just one Black writer at a time? more »
2022-06-25 | C.L.R. James was a polymath, historian, and philosopher at a time when Black people were not expected to be any of those things more »
2022-09-01 | James Joyce could spend days sculpting a sentence, yet there is no good answer to the question "What is Joyce's style?" more »
2021-11-16 | How does the esteemed literary scholar Mark McGurl go from Henry James to Space Raptor Butt Invasion? more »
2023-04-07 | Dunwich — the city that fell into the sea — was immortalized by Henry James, J. M. W. Turner, and other artists more »
2013-09-28 | Dickens dabbled in it. So did Henry James, Somerset Maugham, and John Cheever. All were susceptible to the lure of supernatural fiction more »
2014-04-16 | The celebrated Shakespearean James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips dressed like a tramp and lived in the woods, where he hoarded rare artifacts of the Bard more »
2014-05-15 | Impoverished by erudition. Learned references can snuff the poetic flame. What we need, says Clive James, is more ?brilliantly articulated bitching? more »
2013-12-19 | On December 15, 1913, Ezra Pound wrote to an unknown Irish author, James Joyce. The letter set in motion a literary revolution more »
2014-01-29 | Robert Frost loathed arty pretension, but he was no folksy rustic. His poems are wonders of sophisticated construction. Clive James explains more »
2012-08-16 | Here's the thing about Pauline Kael: You could trust her diligence and enthusiasm. The question, says Clive James, is whether you could trust her judgment more »
2014-10-03 | ?At the moment,' says Clive James, 'I am in the slightly embarrassing position where I write poems saying I am about to die and I don't? more »
2010-01-01 | Graduate school in the humanities may not be a sure ticket to a career, says James Mulholland, but it is neither a "trap" nor a "lie" more »
2010-01-01 | 'James Madison argued that chaplains in the armed forces were "inconsistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principles of religious freedom." He''s still right' more »
2011-01-01 | Americans use language to cover the sleeper, not to wake him, James Baldwin said, which was why the writer as artist is so important more »
2016-05-23 | How to describe late Henry James? Rebarbatively abstract, recondite, complicated, confusing -- all true. It's his difficulty that helps makes him worth reading more »
2016-07-23 | Clive James is not a Proust scholar, but he is a Proust appreciator — an enthusiast, not an expert. The distinction is what matters more »
2011-01-01 | 'David Thomson''s dictionary of film - five editions in 35 years, more than 1,000 pages - is a book meant to be argued with. Clive James is game' more »
2011-01-01 | Translators braced for "a storm of opposition" to what was in essence a vanity project, but the King James Bible went on to endure for 400 years more »
2017-11-27 | If the birth of states meant disease, famine, drudgery, and bondage for so many, why deplore their collapse? For James Scott, it’s complicated more »
2022-10-19 | James Bennett: "I was so bewildered for so long after I had what felt like all my colleagues treating me like an incompetent fascist” more »
2022-06-14 | The James Patterson factory: co-authors are the key to his 260 best sellers and 400 million copies sold more »
2021-04-03 | "War to war, wife to wife, novel to novel." Hemingway's most constant mistress, says James Parker, "may have been concussion" more »
2020-10-20 | An American Bacchus. James Beard was 310 pounds of blazing appetite — “for money, for applause, for butter, for more butter” more »
2010-01-01 | 'Andy Warhol''s 200 One Dollar Bills goes up in price by tens of millions, while 200 actual one dollars bills become more worthless. James Panero on mysteries of the art market' more »
2016-08-03 | Two men and the city. James Joyce and Italo Svevo met in Trieste in 1907. One was an artistic prodigy and a drunk, the other was an abstemious businessman. Both were geniuses more »
2015-08-17 | “The childish urge to understand everything doesn’t fade when the time approaches for you to do the most adult thing: vanish.” So Clive James keeps reading more »
2016-03-03 | Pink teacups, crumbling frescoes, and a brown typewriter. What can one learn from a journey to James Baldwin’s house in Saint-Paul de Vence? A great deal, it turns out more »
2015-06-09 | A guide to Jonathan Galassi’s Muse: Pepita Erskine = Susan Sontag; Sterling Wainwright = James Laughlin; Elliott Blossom = Harold Bloom. But who is The Nympho? more »
2018-12-03 | "The internet hasn’t so much changed people’s relationship to news," says James Meek, "as altered their self-awareness in the act of reading it" more »
2018-06-20 | Murders over a Mexican stele, a “Modigliani” unceremoniously tossed around, frequent calls from the FBI. Life is not dull for James Martin, the world’s top art detective more »
2018-09-19 | A publishing romance. James Laughlin was 6-foot-6, a handsome champion skier. Tennessee Williams was hunched over and wore dirty gray pants. The rest was history more »
2017-10-16 | “The key to writing biography is the capacity to be empathetic,” says James Atlas, who failed in that regard when writing his book on Saul Bellow more »
2017-12-18 | It does not take long to sense something false in Andrew Wyeth. His art was his artifice, and his compelling images carry the stamp of inauthenticity. James Panero explains more »
2015-03-25 | Clive James no longer has the energy to write long pieces. Poetry is his main event now, and he makes it seem like the most exciting thing in the world more »
2015-06-18 | Henry James loved his mother and was desperate to get away from her. It’s no coincidence that some of his best novels have no mothers at all more »
2015-12-21 | Since Genesis, no story has been free of gossip. Without Cain and Abel, there is no Chaucer, no Boswell, no Jane Austen, no Proust, no Henry James more »
2020-02-01 | Far from the hater he's made out to be, James Wood is an enthusiast. And when he does write a pan, "his disapproval is only a correlate of his abiding love" more »
2020-02-03 | What's the meaning of a hotel? Henry James regarded it above all as a place of public performance — where society came to see and be seen more »
2013-02-15 | In his fiction, James Lasdun specializes in creepy narrators. In his life, has been slandered by a creepy stalker. 'The nature of a smear is that it survives formal cleansing? more »
2015-08-14 | Think James Wood is too literary, too devoted to intellect? Then consider his use of the word “life,” and the primacy he gives to physical existence more »
2015-08-26 | James Whistler was a raffish dandy who perfected the personal grudge. “Whistler’s Mother” was the painter's attempt to change this reputation — to claim genteel respectability more »
2016-11-22 | The ideal translator is a person "on whom nothing is lost,” said Henry James. Or maybe it's a machine. But a machine won't stop you from swearing at nuns more »
2017-10-09 | Henry James transformed the novel form into something new. Turn to chapter 27 of The Portrait of a Lady to see the birth of the psychological novel more »
2019-03-21 | “I detonate around him.” It’s easy to mock bad sex writing — especially that of Lawrence, Mailer, or E.L. James. But does that get us any closer to good sex writing? more »
2017-09-09 | He couldn’t sing and didn’t know anything about the music, yet James Baldwin called himself a blues singer. What does it mean for a writer to be a blues singer? more »
2017-10-06 | James C. Scott faults civilization for destroying the freedom and equality of our ancestors. But civilization is why we value such ideals in the first place more »
2018-03-24 | When artists had jobs. Philip Glass was a plumber; James Dickey, a sloganeer for Coca-Cola. Day jobs provided artists with space for stray thoughts. Can they still? more »
2018-04-03 | James Baldwin in Hollywood. He was there to make a movie about Malcolm X. It didn't go well. “I would rather be horsewhipped ... than repeat the adventure” more »
2016-07-12 | Sure, the glossy magazines are leaking prestige, power, page counts, and glamour. But the allure remains, and James Wolcott can't get too many tales from the editors' desks more »
2011-01-01 | Art is beauty, expression, and energy in a form that emerges in its own time and on its own terms, says James Panero. So is the frenetic life of the web compatible with decent art criticism? more »
2011-01-01 | Somerset Maugham found it odd that Henry James ignored the most important fact of his day, the rise of the U.S. as world power, for the tittle-tattle of European drawing-rooms. Therein lies a lesson more »
2016-10-28 | Hilton Als was 14 when he first read James Baldwin. "I realized you could write in a ... there's no other way to put it, really, except it was a kind of high-faggoty style" more »
2017-12-12 | What do Ursula K. Le Guin, chronicler of imaginary lands, and James Salter, who wrote of soldiers and marriage, have in common? They're both moralists more »
2019-11-14 | Ibsen was reviled by some as immoral, hailed by others as prophetic. James Joyce thought him the most influential intellect of his time. Ibsen retains his potency today more »
2018-12-24 | How to reconcile Philip Larkin's poems and prejudices? He thought his poems were for the public, whereas his letters were not. In that respect, the man was a gibbering dunce, says Clive James more »
2018-03-27 | For James Wood, the novel is “the slayer of religions.” Rationalist writers like Ian McEwan agree — they want their craft to be more scientific, less spiritual. Is it? more »
2017-06-14 | James Baldwin's FBI file runs 1,884 pages. It's full of marginalia, including this, in 1964, from J. Edgar Hoover: “Isn’t Baldwin a Well-Known Pervert?” more »
2021-07-20 | Ishmael Reed is not a fan of Hamilton, Amanda Gorman, the James Baldwin revival, or anti-racism — which he calls “the new yoga” more »
2014-08-04 | For the last 20 years of his life, James Baldwin lived in a hilltop village above Nice. His house is now derelict and vacant, full of flaking plaster and a piece of ancient baguette more »
2014-04-08 | The New Review: Cover art by Roy Lichtenstein, fiction by Ian McEwan, essays by Isaiah Berlin, Philip Larkin, A.J.P. Taylor, Clive James. Best literary magazine of the past 50 years? more »
2014-12-31 | For James Patterson ? 305 million books in print, 24-book contract ? writer's block is never a problem. 'I look at it the way Henry Ford would look at it? more »
2015-09-05 | When a bag of urine taped to the leg of Clive James broke, a nurse mopped up. "I hope that sum total of my writings has been as useful to the world as her kindness" more »
2017-05-04 | Sex letters. James Joyce sent them. So did Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Proust sent one to his grandfather. In the age of Tinder, does the sex letter have staying power? more »
2016-04-11 | James Baldwin's first novel was set in Harlem. His second had all white characters. His publishers were having none of it. You're a "Negro writer," they reminded him more »
2019-02-11 | Since when is reading James Baldwin out loud in class an academic crime? Randall Kennedy on the anti-intellectualism and illiberal conformity ascendant in parts of the academy more »
2018-08-25 | Architectural criticism has a rich tradition of antimodern alarm. James Stevens Curl is eager to join it. He wrote the critique of all critiques, or at least he tried more »
2018-03-03 | "I’ve lost my nerve a little bit. I think it’s growing older, and a certain reservoir of anger literally runs out," says James Wood. He’s "not slaying people anymore" more »
2018-03-10 | A thousand pages of heavily redacted text, years of legal appeals, a censorious scolding of the FBI. James Baldwin’s FBI file has had a life of its own more »
2020-06-20 | “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us.” So wrote James Baldwin in 1965, in words that echo today more »
2023-04-20 | John James Audubon was a killer of birds by the barrelful, a racist, and an enslaver. We turn to him not for goodness, but for “a certain kind of otherwise unbearable knowledge" more »
2020-10-16 | James Wood has a suggestion: "Every professor of literature should stand in a classroom and announce (in effect): 'My god, this is beautiful.' And yes, do it every year, anew" more »
2018-08-20 | “In poetry, words rhyme; in puns, ideas rhyme,” says James Geary. “This is the ultimate test of wittiness, keeping your balance even when you’re of two minds.” So why do puns have a bad reputation? more »
2019-10-15 | Harold Bloom, “a singular breed of scholar-teacher-critic-prose-poet-pamphleteer,” has died. He was 89... James Wood... Graeme Wood... Michael Dirda... Justin A. Sider... Dwight Garner... James Romm... Marco Roth... Lucas Zwirner... David Lehman... Gary Saul Morson... Stanley Fish... Guardian... AP
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2023-05-23 | Martin Amis — novelist, memoirist, journalist, critic, caustic wit, dazzling stylist — is dead. He was 73... Dwight Garner... James Wood... Salman Rushdie... Ian McEwan... Lisa Allardice... Boyd Tonkin... James Parker... A.O. Scott... Christian Lorentzen... Terry Eagleton... Jennifer Egan... Tom Meaney more »
2018-05-24 | Philip Roth, master chronicler of the American berserk, is dead. He was 85... Zadie Smith... Paul Berman... Dwight Garner... Stephen Metcalf... Nathan Englander... Talia Lavin... James Wood... Bernard Henri-Levy... Sam Lipsyte... Roger Cohen... Ron Charles... Marc Weitzmann... Nicole Krauss... Wash Post...Guardian... The Forward... The New Yorker... David Marcus... Elizabeth Pochoda... Marco Roth more »