Oct. 23, 2018 | Writers and their fathers. In the space between what Joyce knew about his father, a violent drunk, and what Joyce felt about him, the author forged his style... more »
Oct. 22, 2018 | It’s tempting to think that enchantment ended with the Enlightenment. But what of Isaac Newton’s alchemy, the Frankfurt School’s occult leanings, Americans’ belief in demonic possession?... more »
Oct. 20, 2018 | A strange first job. After Oxford, Anthony Powell joined perhaps the only publishing house run by someone who hated books and considered authors “a natural enemy”... more »
Oct. 19, 2018 | The literature of identity can be self-obsessed, isolating, and overwhelmingly aggrieved. But it can also rally us to the cause of individual freedom... more »
Oct. 18, 2018 | Cy Twombly fell for Robert Rauschenberg, an Italian heiress, and, reportedly, his own assistant. His art, like his love life, was inscrutable... more »
Oct. 17, 2018 | George Scialabba is a mind out of time. His temper — a radical who demonstrates the virtues of conservatism — is the very opposite of what passes for serious thought these days... more »
Oct. 16, 2018 | Gandhi: Behind the cuddly icon was a relentlessly counterintuitive thinker — self-sacrifice over self-interest, obligations over rights, dying over killing... more »
Oct. 15, 2018 | The Iliad and Odyssey shaped behavior in the Greek world. How so? One example: they tarnished the reputation of daytime sex for well over a millennium... more »
Oct. 13, 2018 | Unambiguous identities – and the politics of identity – may be illusions. But when they are widely accepted, illusions become very powerful social facts... more »
Oct. 12, 2018 | Life has sped up. We ruthlessly divide our time into efficient units. We even walk faster than we used to. Time to slow down... more »
Oct. 11, 2018 | Work: The Greeks reviled it; the Judeo-Christian tradition thought it could lead to redemption. We think it’s simply what one does... more »
Oct. 10, 2018 | For Marilynne Robinson, the culprit behind our ills is disbelief, which neatly fits her theological disposition. But are we really suffering a surfeit of rationality... more »
Oct. 9, 2018 | The average person consumes 100,000 words a day. But are we paying close attention to what we read?... more »
Oct. 8, 2018 | Translators should themselves be artists, argues a new book. The goal: not just to accurately recreate a work of literature, but to enhance it... more »
Oct. 6, 2018 | “I did not feel guilty,” said Doris Lessing of the children she abandoned in Africa. But she also compared guilt to an iceberg, with “ninety-nine hundredths hidden”... more »
Oct. 5, 2018 | Young Oscar Wilde: Physically unprepossessing – overgrown, clumsy, “slab-faced” – he was nonetheless magnetic. But his talent was to annoy as much as to amuse... more »
Oct. 4, 2018 | The reluctant genius and the relentless promoter. Though Max Brod turned out his own books, his life was defined by the items he seized from the late Kafka’s desk... more »
Oct. 3, 2018 | Lionel Trilling's letters reveal a man who was deft, a bit dull, and often depressed. Above all, a man exquisitely attuned to small slights... more »
Oct. 2, 2018 | Yes, utopian projects deserve deep suspicion. Moral progress is, after all, fragile. But can our highest aspiration really be a purpose-free life?... more »
Oct. 1, 2018 | For 25 years, Irad Kimhi has perfected the résumé of an academic failure. Or is the philosopher a hidden giant hampered by his perfectionism?... more »
Sept. 29, 2018 | Plennie L. Wingo set out to walk around the world backward. He thought he’d strike it rich. Instead he got $4 and calves in the front of his legs... more »
Sept. 28, 2018 | Mike Davis: trucker, scholar, Marxist, expert on Turkish cinema. Now he's turned to the environment. His question: Who will build the ark?... more »
Sept. 27, 2018 | The history of the book does not begin with books. Chinese tortoise shells inscribed 3,000 years ago; Sumerian clay tablets with cuneiform scripts; knotted string records by Incan officials... more »
Sept. 26, 2018 | The advice column wasn’t born in America, but it flourished there. It's a kooky genre, coming with the promise — at least the hope — of setting ourselves right... more »
Sept. 25, 2018 | Jill Lepore has told a story of America — its sunny ideals and its darker realities. She rejected the urge to moralize but can't resist making stern judgments... more »