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Articles of Note
Lionized in his own time, Beethoven was nonetheless in a perpetual rage. Thus his fondness for exclamation points... more»
Physics hinges on the idea that the human mind can encompass the universe. What if thats wishful thinking?... more»
Anxiety of influence. While most Impressionists disavowed the old masters, Cézanne studied their works with painful precision... more»
Like a Victorian social reformer, Alain de Botton wants to lead the masses away from shallow consumerism. And he wants to make a buck... more»
Terry Eagleton used to be “an earnest, high-minded, grim-lipped intellectual.” Then feminism redirected his gaze to low-minded virtues... more»
Time to close the book on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Neither practical nor wise, and hardly original or consistent, he was, at best, an aphorist... more»
Love triangles, tales of incestNabokovs works call out for cinematic adaptation. There is, of course, an exception: Pale Fire more»
The strange case of Rosemary Tonks. A successful poet and novelist, she smashed her possessions, burned her unfinished manuscript, and started anew... more»
Clichés in context. At best they help us understand our commonality; at worst they replace our thoughts entirely... more»
Greece without Greek? Japan with no Japanese? Of the world’s 6,000 languages, by 2115 only 600 will survive. John McWhorter explains... more»
For Gandhi, punctuality was a moral imperative. His watch, which ruled his day, stopped at 5:13 p.m. on January 30, 1948. Gandhi was dead... more»
One night in 1967, concertgoers packed a small venue in New York City. The performer, a cellist, wore a football helmet, jersey, and nothing else... more»
Philip Larkin averaged four poems a year. Silence is preferable to publishing rubbish, he said, and far better for ones reputation... more»
In effectively policing science, retraction is both too powerful and too mild. Errors continue to obfuscate facts... more»
For James Patterson 305 million books in print, 24-book contract writers block is never a problem. I look at it the way Henry Ford would look at it... more»
Shakespeare scholars are a fractious bunch, but when it comes to explaining his enduring appeal, the predominant answer has survived centuries of debate... more»
Francis Fukuyama, post-structuralist? As a young man, he sat at the knees of Derrida, Lacan, Barthes before concluding, This was total bullshit... more»
Big brain projects in the U.S., Europe, Japan are generating loads of data but no solid theories about how neurons give rise to cognition... more»
How innovation works. Its not lone geniuses with brilliant insights, but collaboration and big ambitions... more»
Pity Santas elves. They work all year for a jolly but demanding boss who pays a pittance or nothing at all and hogs all the credit... more»
String theory is a remarkable and beautiful idea. But after 30 years, its still unproven. Can it really explain our universe?... more»
Sea change, drop in the bucket, give a wide berth werent always clichés. They entered the vocabulary as clever novelties... more»
Paul Berman has read the post-mortems for The New Republic, and hes annoyed. Yes, it was a political magazine. But it was also a singular journal of the arts... more»
The writing of history has its own history, which was indelibly shaped by the ambitious and flawed New Left historians... more»
When did the humble donkey become the ultimate fighting machine? It all began in 520 BC with King Darius I... more»
Ayn Rand on the Strip. Both Las Vegas and Objectivism offer an escape from reality. How fitting that acolytes of the turgid novelist descended on the city... more»
Wu wei, the art of trying but not too hard is central to romance, religion, politics, and business. Those ancient Chinese philosophers were on to something... more»
Collapse of The New Republic. If we published Nietzsches Birth of Tragedy, the only question would be, Did it travel well? Yes, Wagner tweeted it... more»
Grand critiques of the humanities rely on caricature. When we look closely, we see the value it brings. Consider historians... more»
Bletchley Park: Rarely has so much eccentricity and genius been concentrated in one place. Now its home to Alan Turings teddy bear... more»
Wikipedia: Where an entrenched, stubborn, sometimes racist and misogynistic old guard bends the truth to its will... more»
Jenny Diskis father was a professional con man, her mother an addict. Diski tried suicide a few times. Then, age 15, she was sheltered by Doris Lessing... more»
Margins are for scribbling, pages for folding, spines for breaking. We have a responsibility to read with a pen in hand. Tim Parks explains.. more»
For 35 years, Denis Dutton edited Philosophy and Literature. His commitment was to language that is simple, clear, and elegant... more»
Alcohol, death, and the devil. In the 17th century, booze was rumored to turn men into swine, to expose their bodies to Satans touch... more»
When the sociologist Saskia Sassen was a girl in Argentina, her family had a frequent visitor: Adolf Eichmann... more»
There are many Orwells: Literary Orwell, militant Orwell, rural Orwell, paternal Orwell. Sixty-five years after his death, they're all in demand... more»
To understand the economics of space exploration, look to Zheng He, leader of an elite band of eunuch adventurers in 15th-century China... more»
Hans Ulrich Obrist super-curator, data gatherer, gadfly of the European art circuit is afflicted with wanderlust and logorrhea... more»
The comedy of Kafka biography: Its silly to read about the man when you could be reading his books... more»
France is abuzz about pundit-provocateur Eric Zemmours diagnosis of what ails the country... more»
The rise of cubism. What happened in Paris in 1910 can be thanked or blamed for almost everything in art that came later that century... more»
Beyond Lucky Jim. Campus novels have evolved since Kingsley Amis. The genre has moved beyond jaded satire... more»
From Hugh Hefner to Gloria Steinem, Reinhold Niebuhr to Groucho Marx: These 100 people defined the 20th century at least according to The New Republic... more»
Few relics of the traditional book business remain. Then theres Fred Bass, 86. Four days a week, he mans the book-buying desk at The Strand... more»
I am not a saint who lives in a loincloth and eats goats cheese and doesnt have sex and says Im poor, declares Arundhati Roy. Its crap... more»
Decline of the avant-garde. They got authority by damaging the earlier establishment, says David Hockney. But they damaged all authority... more»
Our passwords, ourselves. More than an annoyance, they are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. They are totems of our inner lives... more»
The fragment is the size of a credit card, with eight lines of text. It will change the way we understand Christianity. Or its a hoax... more»
An entity rules the world. Maybe you can influence it, warns Jaron Lanier, but youd better be in terrified awe of its power. Divinity? Or technology?... more»
The case for Van Goghs suicide is tarnished by bad history, bad psychology, and bad forensics. So if he didnt shoot himself, who did?... more»
Whether tapered, snout-like, or hooked, the Jewish nose displays a remarkably diverse history in Christian art... more»
Anonymous is a hacker collective of young geeks in funny masks writing faux-revolutionary manifestoes. Its hardly a serious political movement... more»
William McPherson has a Pulitzer Prize and no money. He isnt wretched-of-the-earth poor, but hes poor. Heres how he reached that status... more»
At Kyoto Imperial University in the 1940s, the search for a philosophy of absolute nothingness pointed in one direction: kamikaze pilots... more»
In the early 50s, German-Jewish philosophers began returning to Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Heidelberg. Jürgen Habermas was a young man at the time. He remembers it well... more»
Flirting in Morse code. 19th-century telegraph operators were a surprisingly literary bunch, with a knack for the romance novel... more»
Once the subject of intellectual scorn, the gothic is back. Whats the allure of leylines, Freemasons, and ghosts?... more»
In praise of gossip. Behind-the-back chitchat and the exchange of juicy tidbits are what makes society possible... more»
At Lab126 in Silicon Valley, people in light-blue lab coats are inventing the future of reading a future owned by Amazon... more»
One writes a repellent book not to be repellent but to represent the repellent, to expose it, to reveal how it looks. Roth rereads Portnoy's Complaint... more»
What an 18th-century hellfire preacher taught Marilynne Robinson about metaphysics, aesthetics, transcendence, and the complexity of things... more»
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»
Dan Kahan, one of Americas most prominent obscure academics, wants to erase the gap between what scientists know and what the public believes... more»
Bertolt Brechts bad breath. Poor dress, poor hygiene, poor manners: It was his way of showing solidarity with the proletariat... more»
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»
Chapters: They organize our books and provide a metaphor for our lives. Where did they come from? A befuddled 15th-century scholar... more»
James Burnham, a socialist, CIA agent, philosopher, and Cold Warrior, was a master analyst of oligarchy, in his day and ours... more»
The crime: Stealing a 299-year-old Stradivarius. The suspect: A hard-luck building manager who fancied himself a high-end art thief... more»
On Susan Sontags hard drive: lists of the best dry white wines, an article on the low carb craze, music by Edith Piaf, and a folder labeled Word Hoard... more»
Are Jared Diamonds sweeping answers to big questions why some civilizations prosper oversimplified and morally odious?... more»
Heres the thing about feminist novels: If the feminist ambition overrides the narrative ambition, it isnt a novel. Roxane Gay explains... more»
In 1913, Ambrose Bierce rode a horse into Mexico and disappeared. There were clues too many to follow. Indeed, Bierce died over and over again... more»
Politicians talk about evil as if it could be eradicated. But the only effective strategy begins with accepting that evil will never go away... more»
Sex and scandal in 18th-century Dublin. Laetitia Pilkingtons path to literary fame ran through debtors prison and a minefield of vicious gossip... more»
The cult of speed. The faster we go, it seems, the less time we have. And youll never be fast enough. Eventually speed kills.. more»
Beethovens reputation is oversized, crushingly sublime, debilitating to all in his wake. Was he too great for the good of his art?... more»
Rachmaninoff spent two years working on his first symphony. It had its premiere one night in 1897. The conductor was drunk. Cue the disaster... more»
Meek assertions, copious footnotes, weasel words like perhaps: Behold the intellectual cowardice of academics... more»
The 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature was a crown without a king. Sartres refusal was not personal. It was metaphysical... more»
Beginning in 1940, the Rockefeller Foundation rescued six Nobel winners and six future laureates. Deciding whom to save meant deciding whom not to... more»
Sex has always been fraught with ambivalence and shame. Now an army of politicians and bureaucrats adjudicates it on campus. That's awkward... more»
The Berlin Wall created misery, but also an extensive laboratory for studying politics, economics, and human nature... more»
Paul Ekman is known for recognizing a lie just by the look on the speakers face. But has the psychologist stretched the truth?... more»
Shakespeare and the brain. Wordplay, poetics, figurative language: the Bard can teach cognitive scientists about meaning and the mind... more»
Stanley Milgrams experiments were not so much about proving a hypothesis as about performing a play. Poor science, but great art... more»
In the digital age, we read strategically. We target, we search, we skim. We dont dig; we sift. The result: information, not knowledge more»
Its genius season, when the MacArthur Foundation celebrates the already famous and rewards the much rewarded. All in the name of advancing creativity... more»
Marilynne Robinson thinks humans are brilliant creatures. And generally incomprehensible to one another... more»
Why do you have so many Jewish friends? the interrogator asked. Chomsky, Berlin, Steiner: How to explain? Surviving an Iranian prison... more»
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 dont... more»
We treat procrastination as pathology, but why? Idleness, loitering, dawdling these are often the keys to creativity more»
The rags-to-riches narrative permeates the American psyche. From Franklin to Carnegie to his own father, John Swansburg ponders why... more»
Histories of philosophy are difficult to write. Bertrand Russell excelled. Then theres Peter Adamsons new, pun-laden work more»
Behind the animatronic Adams and sexpot Eves that attract visitors to the Creation Museum is a humorless Australian named Ken Ham... more»
Karl Miller, founding editor of the London Review of Books, master of the aperçu and the clever one-liner, is dead at 83... more»
So we give up the pleasures of entertainment for the seriousness of art? Not even Henry James would agree... more»
Even the most egalitarian white people are guilty of bias, and one bias in particular: They assume the worst about black people... more»
In theory, all languages are equal. In practice, chauvinism reigns. Enter the radical linguists... more»
Donald Antrim, chronically underrated, had a year of recognition, which he calls a very unexpected occurrence. He didnt expect to still be alive... more»
John Brockman, literary über agent and intellectual arbiter, wrote a trilogy of experimental, divisive books. Then, at age 32, he retired from writing... more»
That tenacious stock character, the depressed writer. Hemingway, Woolf, Wallace: We divine a link between creativity and madness. But is it a fiction?... more»
Americans are a people obsessed with living longer, a misguided and destructive obsession, says Ezekiel Emanuel. He wants to die at 75... more»
We start our embryonic lives as females, so how different can the sexes really be? Very, says Lewis Wolpert. Not least in how we think, play, and write... more»
Martin Amiss bracingly weird new novel, a satire set in a concentration camp, has received strong reviews. But German publishers arent interested... more»
Evolutionary psychology was once the butt of academic jokes. Now its everywhere especially our sex lives. But are its insights bunkum?... more»
What is college for? To learn about history, science, culture. If students want to build a self, says Steven Pinker, they can do it on their own... more»
For more than 100,000 years, humanity has survived every natural disaster. Now the existential risk comes from our own creation: supersmart machines... more»
The idea that the Industrial Revolution made us happier, wealthier, more productive is deeply ingrained. What if it actually made things worse?... more»
What would Adorno or Horkheimer say about TV recaps and celebrity obsession? Probably that their greatest fears have been realized... more»
Hold is the true purgatory of modern existence, says Tom Vanderbilt, a place of temporary damnation, filled not with cleansing fire but a gentle wash of music... more»
Heres a starkly misogynous artifact: the mid-20th-century marriage-advice column.The husband is always right (even when hes very wrong)... more»
College at 15, marriage at 17, a mother at 19: What do those facts suggest about Susan Sontag? Eagerness to grow up. I hated being a child... more»
With millennia of inventions and discoveries at our back, humans have never been more powerful. But were we happier in the Stone Age?... more»
Metaphor used to be a poetic ornament. Then neuroscientists got involved, and a nascent theory of consciousness emerged... more»
Architects against Koolhaas. The starchitect and postmodernist issued clear commands for the Venice Biennale. A rebellion ensued... more»
Analyzing humor, E.B. White wrote, is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies. Yet the study of funny expands... more»
According to Aristotle, to understand something we must grasp what it is not. We must come to terms with nothingness. But how?... more»
The scientific mood has soured. The emphasis is on taking down other scholars and falsifying results, not generating constructive ideas... more»
What to do with church bells in post-Reformation England? Run linguistic experiments and let boozy young men ring them for exercise... more»
In an early poem, John Updike described trash as a wonderland of discard. Now we know the wonders contained in his trash... more»
At 85, E.O. Wilson is still thinking big. He wants to prevent a mass-extinction crisis. How? By handing over half the planet to other species... more»
Who Is Elena Ferrante? The writer has never been interviewed in person, perhaps never even photographed. For her, celebrity is a choice, not an obligation... more»
Mary Beard made her name in part by studying how Romans relieved themselves (togas up, chatting as they went). Now she has a new role: feminist heroine... more»
Why are inequality and social immobility more enduring and extreme in the former Confederacy? Blame the lingering effects of slavery... more»
Society, politics, economics, culture; foreign and domestic; corporate and not-for-profit: The old categories are becoming obsolete... more»
The words we use to describe pain describe something about us, too. The rationalizations, the religious-speak, the martial metaphors... more»
Underline, transcribe, highlight: David Foster Wallace put his anxieties writers block, self-loathing, mental breakdowns in his marginalia... more»
Roomba rising. When we think of robots as humans, we open ourselves up to a gantlet of philosophical concerns... more»
Owen, Sassoon, Remarque: We know how World War I affected writers. Less understood is its cataclysmic impact on the musical world... more»
Nuclear annihilation, Stalins terror, the Holocaust: Martin Amis has positioned himself as a serious writer about serious topics. But is he?... more»
Despite the invective, Mary Beard does not feel bad about her neck or hair or teeth. Im a classicist, not an autocue girl.... more»
Exposed teeth, bunched cheeks, crinkled eyes: A smile is a peculiar thing, not least because of the spooky similarity between laughter and crying... more»
Object lessons. A rusty, pockmarked milk can, a sculpture of two hands, an ivory figurine: Things loom large as other gods seem to fail... more»
Reading as addiction: Is Fifty Shades of Grey a gateway drug for literary fiction? Probably not. Yet we cling to the idea... more»
After E.M. Forster began A Passage to India, he was blocked for nine years. Who can say why? He was so timid and repressed... more»
Tony Judt’s story is also the story of the left: the imagination of the universal through the preservation of the provincial... more»
Teju Cole tweets a (very short) story. “The sentences are isolated, they’re naked, and so there is that much more scrutiny on how they work”... more»
Samuel Beckett, spy. In Nazi-occupied Paris, he went to work for British intelligence. “You simply couldn’t stand by with your arms folded”... more»
Frank Gehry had the Wiggle; Norman Foster the 20-06 Stacker; Zaha Hadid the Z. You haven’t made it as an architect until you design a chair... more»
In the 1990s, young artists feared selling out. Money and art, they thought, were best kept separate. Now young artists fear that no one is buying... more»
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»
Who is Bob Dylan? An aging musician who likes privacy and sleeping with pet mastiffs. A better question might be: Why is Bob Dylan?... more»
“The only time I’ve ever been in a seminar where I have been the leading authority on the subject.” Geoff Dyer attends the Geoff Dyer conference... more»
Keats is regarded as the ur-aesthete – fragile, distant, unable to cope. Not so. He was immersed in radical politics and had a passion for science... more»
The gravity of Edward Hirsch’s expression suggests that something terrible has happened. Now the poet has turned grief into a masterpiece... more»
To survive as the wife or girlfriend of a rock star, a woman must cultivate a strange combination of poise, glamour, and willful self-obliteration... more»
Sex workers, snipers, silver-gelatin photos: The creepy, fascinating, and remarkably prolific life of William T. Vollmann... more»
In this age of fat fingers on tiny touchscreens, autocorrect is a necessity. Whom can we thank for this innovation? A man identified as Bill Vaginal... more»
Joe Queenan, who has attended roughly 1,000 classical-music concerts, offers a warning: Beware the savage, conscienceless, blue-haired ladies... more»
Harper Lee 88, in a wheelchair, forgetful, largely deaf and blind remains where shes been for decades: trapped by the Mockingbird industrial complex... more»
These are hard times for the study of literature. Technology is ascendant, the humanities in retreat. But the activity of writing continues to redeem itself... more»
New Books
American Orwell. Irving Howe was a tender polemicist, a socialist with conservative cultural tastes and a deep commitment to heterodoxy... more»
Long considered calisthenics for the brain, memorizing poetry was once an educational mainstay. What did that mean for poetry?... more»
He looked like a down-and-out panhandler who had sneaked in off Duval Street to swipe a drink and a fistful of peanuts. Gore Vidal at 83... more»
People who want to make a living in arts and letters are screwed. Its a sad fact worthy of attention. Its also not at all surprising... more»
“You don’t retire doing this,” David Hockney says about the artistic circus that is his life. “You just do it till you fall over”... more»
Intellectuals have spoken in the language of difference since the 1960s. Mark Greif recalls a time when commonality was in the air... more»
Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, thinks nations are defined by their books. For America, Huckleberry Finn is where to start more»
The soul-sucking joylessness of the English department. Academics have annihilated the pleasures of reading literature, not to mention their writing... more»
Voltaire's garden was an ethical statement; Emily Dickinsons was a place for private retreat. What--if anything--can we learn from an author's garden?... more»
He was a dandified outsider with outsize ambitions. She was 10 years older and married – well, but not happily. Notes on a strange romance... more»
Willa Cather was against teaching college students how to write creatively, instead of how to write “clear and correct English”... more»
Penelope Fitzgerald, born into a remarkable family, was remarkable herself, not least for her persistence. She published her first book just shy of 60... more»
Step aside, love. Jealousy, an emotion so nuanced that we need other words to capture its twists, makes the world go round... more»
Libertarian paternalism. An oxymoron? Maybe. Desirable? Possibly. Inevitable? Definitely, at least according to Cass Sunstein... more»
Why Homer matters. Readers join a chain of inspiration that spans the history of Western culture. At the start was the poets Muse herself ... more»
Christian in his moral vernacular, Catholic in his sensibility, Marxist in his political intelligence: Terry Eagleton is one odd intellectual... more»
In fairy tales, family members are murderers while animals are saviors. These doses of amorality and anarchy are desperately needed... more»
Witty, handsome, James J Laughlin was hard to resist. But the publisher, poet, and anthologist, founder of New Directions, was deeply flawed... more»
What makes Leo Strauss so compelling? His detractors, mostly, and their eagerness to discover the sinister roots of conservative ideas... more»
Seamus Heaney disdained the righteous, the politically certain, the morally overbearing. He was committed to complication... more»
Le Corbusier, the original starchitect, is blamed for modernisms ills. Much of the vitriol, if not all of it, is deserved... more»
Dickens and his dogs. Timber, Turk, and Sultan were the terror of the neighbourhood, the author boasted. Then he shot Sultan... more»
The French are prickly about criticism who isnt, really? But when it comes to French-bashing, no one does it better than the French... more»
I cant teach someone to write, says John Casey, but I can sometimes teach someone to rewrite. What he can teach them is craft... more»
For Robert Burns (haggis), Virginia Woolf (sausage, haddock), and Emily Dickinson (Black Cake), appetite was important to art... more»
When it comes to Orwell, we risk beatifying the man. Best to state whats simple and true: He was always interesting, even when he was wrong... more»
Death by a thousand apps. Self-reliance has given way to learned helplessness. Automation makes our lives safer and easier. But the costs are dear... more»
Art in an age of relentless acceleration. The novel used to be a speedy way of delivering ideas and experiences. Now its unbearably slow ... more»
Smiles are fleeting, says Mary Beard, and hard to pin down. The perfect smile is a modern obsession. Blame the dental-industrial complex... more»
I never say what I believe and I never believe what I say, declared Machiavelli. If I sometimes say the truth, I conceal it among lies... more»
Norman Mailer planned to write his autobiography but never got around to it. Instead we have his letters 45,000 of them... more»
Graffiti varies from place to place. In New York, its gallery-approved. In the Arab world, its political. In Pompeii, it was erotic and funny... more»
Beer, whiskey, wine, grain, tobacco, molasses, cement, fish, coins: The barrel is far from a simple idea... more»
Ian Buruma's interests Anne Frank, Clint Eastwood, kamikazes are linked by a single question: Why do humans behave so atrociously?... more»
Behold a new volume of T.S. Eliots letters, all 800 unbearably banal pages. His wifes car was prone to skidding. He had many lunch appointments... more»
A magazine should plant its flag at the bloody crossroads where impertinence and rigor meet. How do TNR, Baffler, Believer, and n+1 stack up?... more»
Say what you will about Foucault his self-indulgence or his preening radicalism the man had a knack for sniffing out obscure information... more»
The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky revered Lenin, but the feeling was not mutual: rubbish, stupid, beyond belief, and pretentious... more»
Privilege and the penis. Fatherhood, infidelity, alcoholism, baseball, chivalry, porn, freedom: Laura Kipnis on what it means to be a man... more»
Philip Larkin enjoyed washing dishes and doing laundry. How to reconcile that Larkin with his interest in schoolgirls, obscene letters, and trysts?... more»
Its said that fairy tales at are the roots of fiction. Probably so. But scholars cant even agree on what constitutes a fairy tale... more»
For Leonard Bernstein, showbiz success was never enough. According to Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein suffered from a bad case of important-itis... more»
As useless as a fat child in a flood. The worldly incompetence of Dylan Thomas was key to his boyish charm... more»
How did Leo Tolstoy, a writer of such psychological sophistication, succumb to the charms of a third-rate con man like Vladimir Chertkov?... more»
In the years before World War II, there was at least one thing intellectuals could agree on: Stefan Zweig wasnt a very good writer... more»
Bertolt Brecht: A Marxist who wore long underwear, looked like Gertrude Stein, and wrote surprisingly good erotic poetry... more»
Magnificently grotesque, vicious, or perhaps comic, the troll is a resilient character. Why we need trolls... more»
The Clive James voice: intensely serious yet self-mocking, grave but never solemn, highbrow but never snobby. And always gorgeously inventive... more»
Talk about a lack of science funding: Pavlov had to sell canine gastric juices and grow vegetables to eat. Some colleagues starved to death... more»
How does aesthetics affect history? In spurts that look forward as well as backward. Take rock 'n' roll... more»
East German censors saw their role as enabling literature, not suppressing it. That's not to say, of course, that texts weren't rejected as late bourgeois... more»
Its OK to say, Im working on a novel; its inadvisable to say, Im working on my novel. The distinction interesting, but is it an art project?... more»
E.O. Wilson has tried to explain everything: racism, overpopulation, cooperation, religion. Now hes taking on the meaning of life.. more»
The narrowing of history. Ever more scholars shed light on an ever more obscure past. When did historiography become an esoteric art?... more»
Whatever the reason Twitter trolls, libel laws, political correctness the literary feud is in decline. And the culture is worse off for that... more»
Formidably erudite, faintly manic, and impossible to shut up, Slavoj iek is a cult figure. At least hes self-aware enough to send-up that status... more»
Bob Hope: Cocky, brash, bumptious, inveterate skirt-chaser, self-confident wise guy. But was he funny? For a time... more»
In Laschs time, narcissism was a potent diagnosis of a dangerous national character. In our time, its a mere U-turn on the American road to self-love... more»
Poor Hans Kafka. Everything he wrote, including a story about a beetle and a man, was overshadowed by the work of his neighbor Franz... more»
New York culture at midcentury: Dylan, Trilling, Pollock, de Kooning. Want to read a book that captures that moment? Stay away from this one... more»
Smart watches, refrigerators, doorbells: As the Internet of Things takes over, our privacy recedes. Is privacy just a bourgeois affectation?... more»
Stalins sadism. What to make of a photo snapped while he stared into his first wifes coffin: He displays what looks like remorse... more»
Heres the story we know: Scientific skepticism eroded religious faith. But the line between religion and science was not so bright... more»
Leo Strauss believed in a theory of deliberate obscurity. If he was right, much of modern scholarship will have to be revised... more»
Human character changed on or around June 1995. Who can help us make sense of the barrage of texts, tweets, newsfeeds, and emails? Rebecca Solnit... more»
Washington has long been a chummy and vainglorious town. At its epicenter is Georgetown, a court society and literary commune... more»
On June 16, 1816, Byron told a group of friends, We will each write a ghost story." John Polidori wrote The Vampyre. Byron took credit... more»
Not salacious, as wed think, they describe the mundane: trees, trousers, puddles. The surprisingly pretty love letters of Vladimir Nabokov... more»
The Victorian age abounded in amateur tinkerers. Let us praise the inventions collapsible hats, revolving heels that didnt change the world... more»
Tight-lipped or open-mouthed, smirk or simper, a smile can excite sympathy or incur wrath. In 18th-century France, it conveyed the essence of character. more»
Wonder Woman, introduced in 1941, wore a bustier, hot pants, and kinky boots, but make no mistake: She fought fascism with feminism... more»
From public intellectual to public personality. Cornel West seems more interested in name-dropping and ego-stroking than in original thought... more»
Mondrian called green a useless color. Kandinsky compared it to a fat cow. Nonetheless, we live in greens triumphant age... more»
Working in different languages at nearly the same time, Shakespeare and Montaigne invented the stylistic means for reflecting on the human condition... more»
O, the joys of stage direction. To read a play is to act in your head. The experience is one of pleasure, beauty, and low-level panic... more»
Babylonians, shamans, monks, farmers, patriots, industrialists: Brewers are an ancient and odd bunch. Every beer tells a story... more»
Who was Margherita Grassini Sarfatti? Art collector, editor, malicious gossip, Fascist propagandist. And Mussolinis Jewess... more»
Must the champions of innovation, those who purport to tell us how creativity works, insist on speaking in koan-like platitudes?... more»
The immortal dinner of 1817. Around the table: Keats, Wordsworth, Benjamin Robert Haydon, and Charles Lamb. This meal wasnt about the food ... more»
Machines can defeat chess masters, but can they create literature? The age of the computer as author, the computhor, is nigh... more»
Poetry has long been enlisted as a witness in dark times, a tonic for forgetfulness. But what happens when its as much evidence as art?... more»
Big Data was supposed to eliminate bias, make theories obsolete, and usher in a new Enlightenment. Still waiting... more»
John Gray doesnt believe in beliefs. He strives to hold as few convictions as possible, a stance bizarre, perverse, and impossible to maintain... more»
Lemon juice, orange juice, onion juice; saliva, urine, blood, vinegar, aspirin, and a laxative: How to mix your own invisible ink... more»
I do not like publication of letters, wrote Samuel Beckett. Reading his letters, we see why he wanted to keep his private life private... more»
Childhood innocence: Its uses are economic as well as emotional. Consider the appeal of Shirley Temple more»
Stoic, earthquake expert, humorist, dramatist: Was Seneca knowledgeable about death? Or a complete novice on the topic? more»
August. 9, 1942: day 335 of the siege of Leningrad, where a makeshift orchestra of emaciated musicians performed Shostakovich... more»
Looking to blame someone for Kim Kardashian? Look no more. Oscar Wilde's your man: the first to become famous for being famous... more»
Picture a future of ever-smarter machines. Increased automation will make life easier. It will also erode skills, debase intelligence, and devalue work... more»
The prospects for democracy globally remain good, says Francis Fukuyama. The prospects for democracy in America, however, are grim... more»
In his letters, Samuel Beckett was painstaking about his finances, his language, and his aching mouth. But give him this: He was never boring... more»
We insist on prying into the lives of writers who seek privacy, like Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger. What is it were after? more»
Can we learn moral heroism from books? The diary of Jean Guéhenno, mid-20th-century French intellectual, suggests so more»
Tennessee Williams was always writing, at least in part, about his homosexuality. But the relationship between his plots and his private life is fuzzy... more»
Pirate, hobo, prisoner, prospector, Jack London preferred life to literature. Every time I sit down to write, it is with great disgust... more»
The making of Blaise Cendrars. The master of French modernism was a depressed, heavy-drinking ex-boxer, repeatedly unlucky in love... more»
Enter any research library and youll find introverted academics with disheveled hair. The modern archetype for genius is Einsteinian... more»
Religion poisons everything, encouraging wars, terrorism, and other forms of madness. This view is plausible, widespread, and wrong... more»
Defending the defenders of the humanities. Apologist arguments do them and their cause little good. But its not their fault... more»
If you think there is only one thing to know about censorship that it is always bad youd be wrong. Censorship can be surprisingly benign... more»
Francis Fukuyama believes that liberal democracy is the destination of humankind. His case is undermined in a new book by Francis Fukuyama... more»
How can one shade evoke sickness, hope, hazard, the supernatural? Colors are uncertain things, green not least among them... more»
Coy letters, misleading testimony: Isaiah Berlin traded in secrets at the heart of the Zhivago affair. He would have had us believe otherwise... more»
When he wasnt with Johnson, Boswell could be found at public executions. Watching other men die was preparation for his own demise... more»
The new chasm is not between science and art but between those who speak the language of money and those who dont. John Lanchester explains... more»
Rock & roll appeals to those with little sense of history. Greil Marcuss criticism is a brilliant rebuke... more»
For D.H. Lawrence, it was Bavarian gentians; for Jane Austen, syringa. What is it about flowers that summons the literary muse?... more»
Vladimir and Vera Nabokov were rarely apart. When they were, he wrote about animals, other writers, other women, Jews, gay people... more»
Charles Ives only fitfully found an audience. His was a life of rejection, struggle, redemption. His big break: being weaponized in the Cold War... more»
Whether writing on porn, punk, politics, psychoanalysis, or patriarchy, Ellen Willis snarled and illuminated. She was always agitating... more»
Once broad and expansive, the humanities are now reserved for narrow academic purists. Just look what happened to philology... more»
When we know too much. Jorge Luis Borges, a grand literary ambassador, has been transformed into Georgie, the impotent, mamas boy... more»
Eichmann was anything but banal and mindless, a small cog in Adolf Hitlers extermination machine. The murder of Jews was his sacred duty... more»
Inventiveness was the hallmark of Harry Potter. So how to explain J.K. Rowlings pedestrian, formulaic, and grotesque adult novels?... more»
Walter Benjamin, godfather to left-leaning cultural theorists, had a vexed relationship with academe. Tenure eluded him, perhaps by his own design... more»
We think of feminism as having unfolded in waves first, second, and so on. Now it unfolds in hashtags, more identity than politics... more»
Winemaking has been revolutionized. Most everything being bottled is clean, fruity, smooth, easy to drink, and completely boring... more»
Horses and riders, youths and elders, men and women, animals being led to sacrifice: What is the Parthenons frieze telling us?... more»
Weimar: Where Goethe and Schiller found a home, Liszt blossomed into a musical genius; Bauhaus became possible, and Nazism took hold... more»
Long disregarded from a sixth-rate talent, the Pepsi of Austrian writing Stefan Zweigs work deserves the attention its now receiving... more»
Yes, Eric Hobsbawm was a persistent and unabashed communist. But he was also profoundly bourgeois, of a distinctly Jewish sort... more»
T.S. Eliot attributed his inspiration to it; Philip Larkin described it as the best remedy for a days work. Gin has deep roots in beery Britain... more»
Long before Cuvier, Darwin, and Mendel, Aristotle was deciphering the mysteries of the cuttlefish's abdominal tract, the ambiguities of hyena genitals... more»
Life in Montmartre for Picasso and Matisse was deep blues, green skies, and chaos--all scented with musk and patchouli... more»
Ethan Zuckerman wants to combat provincialism in the digital age. How? Perhaps the rise of the e-flâneur is in order... more»
Philip Larkin was callous toward people mother and lovers included. But he gushed in the presence of hedgehogs, squirrels, bunnies, and bears... more»
C.K. Scott Moncrieff poet, soldier, spy, translator of Proust and Stendhal died at 40 of esophageal cancer. About the cause... more»
The mystery of Murakami: No great writer has written as many bad sentences. Does his ugly prose serve a purpose?... more»
Generally full of boast and bluster, Hemingways letters do ring true on at least one subject: his anger at his parents... more»
Stricken with a litany of ailments, Bertolt Brecht was perseverance personified. “If the 20th century had had an Enlightenment, he would have been it”... more»
Proto-literary deconstructionist, media theorist, fiery communist, hash-smoking Jewish mystic: Readers find the Walter Benjamin they deserve... more»
James Bond had much in common with his creator, Ian Fleming: Sex, drinking, smoking, cruelty, vanity, and a fondness for Jamaica... more»
Irascible and defiant Beethoven is a cliché, yet it is true that he understood people little and liked them less. Music was his only joy... more»
Translating Tolstoy. His prose was so prolix, unpolished, and Russian that, for a time, few wanted to take it on. Then came Constance Garnett... more»
Boris Pasternak’s poems were perhaps his greatest achievement. But he was unimpressed. “Poems are unimportant. I dont understand why people busy themselves with my verses”... more»
A satirical epistolary novel skewers the innards of American academe. Fun. But can it be satire if it barely registers as hyperbole?... more»
The sorrow and survival of François-René de Chateaubriand. “If I had killed myself, nothing would have been known of my catastrophe”... more»
Malcolm Cowley preferred journalism and literary hackwork to academe: “The real trouble with ivory towers is that people go cockoo in them”... more»
No one thinks of Dylan Thomas as a well-adjusted man who could hold his drink. He wasn’t and he couldn’t. But look beyond the mythology... more»
Does metaphor exist to connect us to the world, or to teach the limited nature of that connection, wonders Denis Donoghue... more»
The love of one’s self is a virtue, one that takes time and thought to cultivate. Vanity, however, is a vice. Clancy Martin parses the distinction... more»
Frankenstein and the feminists. For the critic Barbara Johnson, Mary Shelley was born to be a widow. “She looked good in black”... more»
Hume, Locke, and Mill have been relegated to academe. Why does Burke alone, among Britain’s great political thinkers, engage practicing politicians?... more»
Readers are dupes. That’s the paranoid logic of censorship. Literature incites, implores, proselytizes, disrespects – just as it should... more»
Elizabethans joked about venereal disease. Romans laughed at bald men. The history of humor is wildly inconsistent about whats funny... more»
Introduced in 1833, the term "scientist" had grubby connotations. Natural philosophers thought deeply and wrote elegantly, scientists were data crunchers... more»
He mingled with Emerson and Thoreau, enjoyed wine and cigars with Trollope, Wilde, and Twain. Julian Hawthorne was the Zelig of his time... more»
Post-it notes, push pins, staples, pencils, pens, rubber bands: Jenny Diski on the many pleasures of the office stationery closet... more»
Humanity is diverse, and its appealing to think that each language provides its own lens on the world. Not so, but the myth persists... more»
Essays and Opinion
Edgar Allan Poe: popular writer, successful editor, and always meagerly paid. Nearly everything he wrote, he wrote for money... more»
Intense gaze, bare chest, bull-like physique: The camera was crucial to Picassos image as both genius and lover... more»
In Wagner, we encounter a truth: Anti-Semitism is a metaphysical condition that can express itself in unexpected forms, even abstract sound and opera... more»... more»
Packaged pleasures. The tubularization of society cigarettes, tin cans, soda bottles, lipstick marked a radical shift in human experience... more»
“Approaching forty, sense of total failure.” And so Cyril Connolly quit journalism to write a masterpiece. The key, he believed, was to have an interest in but contempt for humanity... more»
The world of high criticism is endangered. Not by academic mandarins, but rather by Silicon Valley philistines. Sean Wilentz explains... more»
Taken in by Doris Lessing, young Jenny Diski was silent for weeks. Then she asked a question that Lessing refused to answer... more»
Amid the rise of technologism and scientism, the replacement of wisdom by quantification, and the recasting of life as data, what's become of humanism?... more»
Yes, the canon is subjective and flawed. But the idea of maintaining one is not. Its crucial to distinguish between the great and the good... more»
Goya’s etchings of war exemplify one aspect of his talent, but it showed up in many guises. The irreducible breadth of an artist’s vision... more»
Wit can be charming or mean, whimsical or incisive. Done well, it mocks pretension, false self-esteem, snobbery. Wit is vital – and in decline... more»
Serious, intellectual writing is overwhelmingly male. Why? Ask the serious, intellectual gatekeepers of serious, intellectual magazines... more»
Silicon Valley is run by some of the most privileged people in the world. Yet they are convinced that they are among the least. Thus, nerd entitlement... more»
Mass-market paperbacks transformed the culture of reading, largely for the better. If no pulps, then no Philip Roth and Erica Jong... more»
The Seventies, once known for its lack of significance, is now a source of mournful nostalgia, for a time when we lost what we had become... more»
Careers in art are being shaped by two trends: The death of the artist as solitary genius, and the rise of the artist as entrepreneur... more»
Culture is a confusing word, fraught with divergent definitions. The way we use it today think rape culture has grown darker, sharper, more skeptical... more»
The force behind the idea of nonviolence was given its most powerful run in the civil-rights era, says Taylor Branch. But it became passé pretty quickly. Too quickly... more»
The world is always more dangerous than it has ever been except it isnt. By most measures war, homicide, genocide its more peaceful than ever... more»
To read with sensitivity for nuance, meaning, and atmosphere is a tricky business. Tim Parks has a few thoughts on how to do it better... more»
Listen closely to two decades of The New York Timess nonfiction best-seller list and you will hear a shrill cry for help from the American people... more»
The folly of fame. Why do we think being remembered will make us immortal? Blame a cognitive blip, part of our evolutionary constitution... more»
Intoxication is an allure best managed, not escaped. This insight simple and profound stretches back to Euripides, at a time when drunkenness was new... more»
Russia is a cultivator of theories and doctrines, with an overwhelming temptation to find the secret forces imagined or not intent on destroying the nation... more»
An American essay today without a sudden and revelatory personal aside is hardly an American essay at all. For that tic we can thank Joan Didion... more»
Cherish foreignness. Enjoying the convenience of modern travel, we underestimate the differences of other lands. Thats a mistake... more»
Modernist art repudiated kitsch, a vague substitute for real emotion. So how did we end up with Jeff Koonss balloon dogs and meta-kitsch?... more»
The less we know about the deep past and we dont know much the more climate looks like an all-purpose explanation of economic and political change... more»
Why are free-market ideas so durable? Maybe because they are right. Or maybe they are wrong but intuitive, tapping into our very sense of self... more»
Slavery and capitalism. The relationship between the two is key to understanding the origins of the modern world... more»
Historian, poet, legal theorist, cryptographer, philosopher: Gottfried Leibniz had many roles, but too often hes remembered for just one thing: Voltaires ridicule... more»
Inventing the future. The Victorians told a particular story about culture, technology, and optimism. It still shapes our vision of things to come... more»
The argumentative Jew. Disagreements are not only real, they are ideal, says Leon Wieseltier. A universe of controversy is a universe of tolerance... more»
For a 1970s feminist like Vivian Gornick, there is cause for dismay today. Womens liberation is in the doldrums, not likely to recover in her lifetime... more»
After 33 years and 3,000 reviews, Jonathan Yardley, self-described old-fashioned man in a new-fashioned world, hangs it up as a book critic... more»
Norman Mailer was a writer for his time, not all time. He lived less as a novelist than as an all-purpose gadfly, taking on every issue of the day... more»
How humanity learned to speak. A language organ? No. A language instinct? No. Our need to cooperate was what paved the way... more»
For an apostle of alienation, Herbert Marcuse sure was a media star. To think his unsettling blend of Hegel, Marx, and Freud ended up in Playboy... more»
Irving Kristol: neo-Marxist, neo-Trotskyite, neo-socialist, neo-liberal, neo-conservative, and, sort of neo-religious. His wife explains... more»
Poetry and privilege. Poets inhabit a culture of exclusivity, driven by MFA programs and the AWP conference. What is it doing to art?... more»
If atheism grew out of Judeo-Christian tradition, what does atheism mean in a Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist context?... more»... more»
Hell has changed a lot over the years, from a place of stillness to one of fiery torment to gaudy satire. It all depends on what sells... more»
The woman who shot Andy Warhol. A foul-mouthed lesbian who hated men, Valerie Solanas had a talent for self-destruction... more»
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»
One billion Facebook users, 400 million tweets per day. The ethos of our time: I want not to be alone. Are social media making people less interested in God?... more»
No bad big idea achieves its full cultural potential without first being sacralized by Wired magazine, writes Jacob Silverman. Crowdsourcing is one such idea... more»
Matthew Arnolds culture war--and ours. The mutton-chopped prophet of high culture lost his battle with the forces of anarchy. Its our loss, too... more»
We have shifted our focus from the meaning of ideas to the means by which theyre produced, says Arthur Krystal. Science envy is ruining the humanities... more»
The invention of clumsiness. With the advent of photography, artists grew to differ in their depictions of the ungainliness of the human form... more»
Rigid morality, hypersensitivity, no taste for bad taste: The art world is now among the more self-policing areas of contemporary culture... more»
Are we ourselves, or are we our souls? From Locke onward, philosophers have debated whether memory or morality shapes our identities... more»
Few things are as melancholy, as bittersweet, as freighted with mortality as an inscription in an old book no longer owned by the dedicatee... more»
Any biographer of Philip Larkin faces a hard fact: He had a quiet life. Childhood, school, women, work as a librarian. Whats left is the poetry... more»
Menacing figures stalk the halls of academe. Stooped, selfish, greedy: The septuagenarian professor is hurting higher education... more»
The Romantics feared the cold rationality of scientists what would become of wonder? Their fears were misplaced... more»
Why is reason important? Leon Wieseltier explains: We need not be a nation of intellectuals, but we must not be a nation of idiots... more»
Why read new novels? Because they arrive unencumbered by received opinions. And because a special pleasure is derived from adjusting ourselves to what's new... more»
Hearing criticisms of your own beliefs is essential to form a considered opinion. The right to be offended is a vital right and its under threat... more»
Mostly young, mostly Americanist, and mostly at Harvard: Historians of capitalism provide a case study in how to shift an intellectual debate... more»
When a book changes your mind, it doesnt just inspire or influence your thinking. It alters the way you see yourself and your place in the world... more»
Scorsese on 50 years of the NYRB. We could have had Smartfellas. Instead we got a breathless documentary smothered in unrelenting piety... more»
Mantras and codes, supplicatory rituals, rites and sacrifices: What does it take to fend off writers block? For Sven Birkerts, merely an afternoon on a bench in Central Park... more»
Derided by scholars, biographers, critics of all stripes, if J.D. Salinger was such a bad writer, why does his work leap off the page?... more»
Combine a disgruntled, gambling-happy professor, a student who doesnt like to read, and Wittgenstein. The result: a revelation... more»
How to build a taxonomy of slang: Create categories for drink or drugs, sex and related body parts, and insults denoting misfits and youre on your way... more»
Bad taste and bad art is how Edmund Wilson dismissed H.P. Lovecrafts novels. He wasnt literary, which is what gave him such power as a writer... more»
The Death of Klinghoffer is the kind of opera that incites outrage. But it is hardly agitprop. It is moving and intelligent. It is a work of art... more»
The 20th century comprised 100 years of horrors. The fault was not fear, greed, jealousy, or love of power. Ideas were to blame. Isaiah Berlin explains... more»
The maker of many mistakes in life, Borges didnt give reality much credence. When things went wrong, this is just an illusion... more»
Great collections are idiosyncratic. Take the Wellcome: Jeremy Benthams skin, Napoleons toothbrush, Florence Nightingales moccasins... more»
How do we measure our days? By faucet drips, bird sounds, the embrace of language. Sven Birkerts on convalescence and what it means to wait... more»
In America, left and right alike suffer from a surfeit of nostalgia. Both sides want to salvage an old vision of the future. The result: pessimism and uneasiness... more»
The end of genius. The label, which once conveyed the supposed superiority of white European males, has outlived its usefulness... more»
Utopianism, said Irving Howe, is a necessity of the moral imagination. He remained as committed to socialism in the 1980s as he'd been in the '30s, and to literature as much as politics... more»
It's been said Alfred North Whitehead said it that the history of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Funny. And completely wrong... more»
T.H. Huxley Darwins bulldog was an eminent scientist, an ardent believer in evolution, and a fierce critic of scientific triumphalism... more»
One second per second is the speed of time, right? Not necessarily. It depends where (and when) you are. Unpacking a cosmic riddle... more»
Severed heads on tables, severed heads below headless bodies, severed heads of accomplices grouped together: Photographing the guillotine... more»
Do we have free will? Neuroscientists think they know; philosophers are unconvinced. But look closely at who is bankrolling these views... more»
Ideas like development and progress have swept the world and left ruin in their wake, taking with them the Wests moral authority... more»
What would you do with an extra 90 minutes each day? Read? Write? Sleep? Watch TV? All you have to do is stop spending time on food... more»
Cocteau, Wilde, Baldwin, Mann: It wasnt an established canon of gay literature. It was what young Philip Kennicott could find... more»
If Terry Eagleton ruled the world: No sports, prisons, cellphones, or pomo cant. And Martin Amis would be compelled to issue calls to prayer at his local mosque... more»
Hearsay at the roots of history: In his time, Herodotus was known as a storytelling tourist. But the attacks on his reputation didn't let up... more»
From Bartleby to Joshua Ferris, the atmosphere of the office novel is one of disaffection. Recent stories tend to begin with layoffs... more»
The Our Bodies, Ourselves generation now have bodies that sag. Self-love has given way to self-loathing. Martha Nussbaum is having none of it... more»
The essay, as form, is part evidentiary proof, part amateurish sally. Its always been that way, explains John Jeremiah Sullivan more»
To be an aesthete in an idea-driven age is to risk being dismissed as irrelevant. Ask Terry Teachout. But dont call him an intellectual more»
Paeans to the printed word scent, feel, heft change nothing. Face facts: The book is in retreat, and so is literary culture as we know it... more»
Transfixed by his own mind, Richard Dawkins misses much that is important about human beings. John Gray on a monument to unthinking certitude... more»
Jenny Diski called Doris Lessing many things: the woman I live with, benefactor, foster mother, friend, fairy godmother, Auntie Doris. None of them seemed right... more»
Diana Athill didn’t set out to think about death. But she did, regularly, every day. Now she’s 96 and unafraid... more»
World War I was the supreme disillusionment. But the culture we connect with that Picasso, the Futurists, Stravinsky emerged before a shot was fired... more»
Oliver Wendell Holmess mollusk, Emily Dickinsons snake, Melvilles Maldive shark: What about animals makes them such attractive poetic subjects? Their inscrutability, for one more»
Think of a compelling idea for a film. Whatever you come up with has more cinematic sizzle than a documentary about the 50-year arc of a literary journal... more»
Academics devote their lives to the world of ideas. So why are they so inept at conveying them? Steven Pinker has answers... more»
Ever since Duchamp’s “readymades,” things have invaded the realm of art. But does presence alone signify aesthetic merit? Consider U2’s new album... more»
Adolf Eichmann was self-righteous, defensive, paranoid, incapable of thinking beyond clichés, and a fanatical anti-Semite. In short, he was banal... more»
Be prepared to see something that you will not like, Freud told his doctor. He opened his mouth. It was cancer. Freud started to plan how to die... more»
Behavioral economics has taught us to be wary of our own cognitive biases. But placing too much faith in our own irrationality is itself irrational... more»
Grasses, leaves, bark, clay, and dirt were once staples of a famine diet. Now theyre served at the worlds most exclusive restaurants... more»
Are generations real? Social scientists routinely make claims about millennials and boomers, but that may be little more than poll-sifted conjecture... more»
The music, the beards, the lack of talent: Are you fed up with hipster culture? Fine. But you have only yourself to blame for its ubiquity... more»
Would Scottish independence be the end of Britishness? If it survives at all, it will become narrow, eccentric, strident and romantic, says Ian Jack... more»
In place of belles-lettres, we have the bibliomemoir. Its mode is nostalgic, its ambition minor; it just might put you to sleep... more»
A philosophy of body art. A tattoo can be many things testimonial, adornment, poignant reminder but they all share a subtext: Look at me... more»
George Orwell was an old-fashioned authoritarian about the English language, imposing his rules and stifling the creativity of others, says Will Self... more»
The end of endnotes? Noel Coward would be pleased. Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love... more»
Male cultural supremacy is a thing of the past. Now women are the dominant voices. And nobody grows up anymore. Who killed adulthood?... more»
As time runs out. Rarely does a writer knowingly record his last words. And yet writing does tend to focus the mind on posterity... more»
When did issues which conveys both judgment and understanding become the perfect word for our postmodern times?... more»
Coded into economics and technology is an ideology of efficiency. Why not have everything we want immediately? Ours is the Impulse Society... more»
How did creativity a contemporary obsession change from a way of being to a way of doing, from a sense of liveliness to a compulsion to make things?... more»
The office is like God: Its everywhere, including, of course, in your pocket. Is that a worse fate than a lonely cubicle? Leah Price wonders... more»
The return of Luddism. Awash in techno-giddiness and gadget infatuation, skepticism is useful, essential, and in short supply... more»
When writers get cancer, they write about it. But is there anything new to say? Jenny Diski, newly diagnosed, forswears the clichés of the genre... more»
Twenty-five years ago, Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history and the triumph of liberal democracy. Today its an ideal in tatters... more»
Jeff Koons is an entrepreneur, not an artist. A Wall Street guy who forever changed the art world. His formula for success: size + garishness = big money... more»
Dear intellectuals: You have a responsibility to speak truth and expose lies. You are failing. You are docile, cowed, and impotent. Best, Fred Inglis... more»
In the combative two cultures debate, a case of epistemological humility shows up. The physicist Marcelo Gleiser on the intellectual arrogance of his field... more»
Against Transparency, Against Interpretation, Against Love: Has the popular posture of cranky provocation lost its edge?... more»
What distinguishes a celebrated yet largely unread classic from an enduringly popular classic? The answer hinges on a fraught term: universality... more»
Empathy is a force against selfishness and indifference. It requires no justification; it is an unalloyed good. So who could be against it? Paul Bloom... more»
David Mitchells novels span the globe. But dont call him global. He is geologic. That the world is everywhere connected is a matter of metaphysical conviction... more»
The more we know about Hitler, the harder he is to explain. Another response to evil is to not ask why, to reject any search for answers. Martin Amis takes a third approach... more»
The perils of time-travel fiction. To draw a moral from the past can be pompous; to visit the future to warn about the present can be patronizing... more»
In the face of fatalism and pessimism, Roger Scruton is Sisyphus. His rock is still rolling, his search for transcendence goes on... more»
In an age of constant status updates, what becomes of art forms like literary memoir that thrive on concealment?... more»
In the writing world, editors rule and writers are second-class citizens. The problem: Editors go about editing whether it is necessary or not... more»
Geoff Dyer has described the hallmark of academic criticism as the fact that it kills everything it touches. Now that hes the subject, hes not so sure... more»
The curious case of David Bromwich. A professor of 19th-century British poetry turns to politics. Blame Edmund Burke... more»
What color, exactly, is Anna Kareninas hair? How tall is Melvilles Ishmael? We see literature in our minds, but what does it mean?... more»
Time is a place and nostalgia a pleasure, says Willard Spiegelman, even if all paradises are lost – or never existed. Those over 50 know the feeling... more»
Literary critic as young hellion. Joseph Epstein was seduced by the “lush air of corruption” that surrounded women like Leona, a heroin-addicted prostitute... more»
On the page and in life, we are primed for beginnings. Endings are problematic, last impressions being so much more fraught than first... more»
If the Ivy League turns out so many soulless graduates, maybe imperfect professors are to blame. But they have little incentive to care... more»
Art is a value in and of itself, not a vessel through which political or social or religious beliefs are conveyed. Why do some liberals think otherwise?... more»
The cult of happiness – the very idea that happiness is actually attainable – has more and more of us depressed. What we need is a decent philosophy of failure... more»
The Brothers Karamazov is among those works of literature that transcend literature. It explains Russia’s history and presence in the world. It explains Putin... more»
First restaurants, now museums. Yelp has introduced a new vernacular of aesthetic judgment. One star is “eek!” Two is “meh.” Three is “A-OK!” Four is “Yay!” Five is... more»
Alexander Cockburn didn’t offer readers ideas, which from him were few and meager. He offered literary flair mixed with antipathy toward gays and Jews... more»
The midcentury middlebrow was an object of scorn to snobs like Dwight Macdonald. Much of middlebrow culture, however, was glorious... more»
The allure of Mount Athos. A magnet for travel writers like Patrick Leigh Fermor and Bruce Chatwin, the holy mountain maintains its mystery... more»
Universities used to be committed to the preservation of cultural memory. Now it’s standardized tests, cost-benefit readouts, and human-resources questionnaires... more»
Highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow. The distinctions have largely disappeared, along with nuanced, considered judgments. The brow we need is the furrowed one... more»
Opposable thumbs, upright posture, big brains, sophisticated language: What most effectively sets humans apart from other species? Our addiction to stories... more»
The God conversation. Intellectuals overemphasize lofty theological impulses, while slighting the day-to-day comforts that keep religion relevant... more»
The swatting of a fly so common, so insignificant demonstrates that we dont know what to think about death, whether a fly's or our own... more»
What do we want when confronting great art? Solitude, contemplation, silence all of which are inhibited, even prohibited, in most museums... more»
The Tolkien problem. Hobbits and dragons dominate the popular imagination. The result: We've lost sight of actual medieval history?... more»
An artists memory is a dangerous, necessary thing. To turn experience into art, to make something out of remembering, is like watching ghosts in sunlight... more»
Bill Deresiewicz hears from a lot of young people. They want advice on how to avoid becoming anxious, depressed, and aimless. He tells them to avoid the Ivy League... more»
Travelling is my life
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