Truman Streckfus Persons was the son of a con man and an alcoholic. Spirited and strange, remarkably precocious, he made his way in New York as Truman Capote... more »
Edward Frenkel sees beauty in numbers, but his work is understood by only a few people. So the mathematician made an aestheticized pornographic snuff film... more »
Beware "distant reading," the scholarly practice of turning literature into data. Why do we cling to this notion of reading as transformative, even sacramental?... more »