Critics debate a new Hudson Yards structure — does it resemble a beehive or a pine cone? They agree, though, that it is an exercise in architectural cynicism... more »
Early modern alchemists feared that their research would trigger social collapse. And so they employed an obfuscatory jargon not rivaled in complexity until postmodernism... more »
Literary parties are generally awkward disasters. This holds in fiction and in life. As John O’Hara put it, they are about “terrible people” getting “gloriously drunk”... more »