Daniel Mendelsohn’s reviews and essays on literary and cultural subjects appear frequently in The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. He is the author, most recently, of the collection Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books include two memoirs, a translation of the complete works of C.P. Cavafy, and a study of Greek tragedy, Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays. He teaches at Bard College.
-
Changes of Fortune
June 20, 2013
-
Herakles: Punished Again!
May 23, 2013
Herakles by Euripides, translated from the Greek and adapted by Peter Meineck, directed by Desiree Sanchez
-
‘The Stranger’s Child’: An Exchange
January 12, 2012
-
On ‘The Stranger’s Child’
December 8, 2011
-
In Gay and Crumbling England
November 10, 2011
The Stranger’s Child
by Alan Hollinghurst
-
A One-Sided Crush
September 29, 2011
The Forster–Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle
edited and annotated by Peter Jeffreys
Selected Prose Works
by C.P. Cavafy, translated from the Greek and annotated by Peter Jeffreys
-
Why She Fell
May 12, 2011
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark directed by Julie Taymor, with music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, and book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger
-
‘The Mad Men Account’
March 24, 2011
-
The Mad Men Account
February 24, 2011
Mad Men a television series created by Matthew Weiner
-
Oscar Wilde, Classics Scholar
November 11, 2010
The Women of Homer by Oscar Wilde, edited by Thomas Wright and Donald Mead
Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde
by Thomas Wright
-
Boys Will Be Boys
September 30, 2010
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ‘70s
by Edmund White
-
The Wizard
March 25, 2010
Avatar a film directed by James Cameron
-
The Dream Director
February 11, 2010
The Sun a film directed by Alexander Sokurov
-
A Wild Night in the Park
October 22, 2009
The Bacchae by Euripides, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis
-
Transgression
March 26, 2009
The Kindly Ones
by Jonathan Littell, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell
-
Oppie in New York
January 15, 2009
Doctor Atomic an opera in two acts by John Adams, libretto by Peter Sellars, directed by Penny Woolcock, with stage design by Julian Crouch
-
Myres: Alexandria in 340 AD
November 20, 2008
-
‘As Good as Great Poetry Gets’
November 20, 2008
-
Evelyn Waugh Revisited
October 9, 2008
Brideshead Revisited a film directed by Julian Jarrold, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh
-
The Truth Force at the Met
June 12, 2008
Satyagraha an opera in three acts by Philip Glass, directed by Phelim McDermott, with stage design by Julian Crouch
Satyagraha: M. K. Gandhi in South Africa, 1893-1914
by Constance Dejong and Philip Glass
Satyagraha an opera by Philip Glass, performed by Douglas Perry, Claudia Cummings, Rhonda Liss, Robert McFarland, Scott Reeve, Sheryl Woods, and the New York City Opera and Chorus, conducted by Christopher Keene
-
His Design for Living
January 17, 2008
The Letters of Noël Coward
edited and with commentary by Barry Day
-
Looking for ‘Lucia’
November 22, 2007
Lucia di Lammermoor an opera by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, directed by Mary Zimmerman
-
On the Town
August 16, 2007
The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman
edited by Stephen Pascal
-
Duty
May 31, 2007
300 a film directed by Zack Snyder
-
Singing ‘Volver’
April 12, 2007
-
The Women of Pedro Almodóvar
March 1, 2007
Volver a film directed by Pedro Almodóvar
-
Lost in Versailles
November 30, 2006
Marie Antoinette a film directed by Sofia Coppola
-
Death at Marathon
October 19, 2006
-
September 11 at the Movies
September 21, 2006
United 93 a film directed by Paul Greengrass
World Trade Center a film directed by Oliver Stone
-
The Way Out
June 8, 2006
Everyman
by Philip Roth
-
The Spanish Tragedy
May 25, 2006
Sepharad
by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
-
‘Brokeback Mountain’: An Exchange
April 6, 2006
-
An Affair to Remember
February 23, 2006
Brokeback Mountain a film directed by Ang Lee, based on the story by E. Annie Proulx
-
The Last Minstrel
December 15, 2005
Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth
by Steven G. Kellman
-
The Truman Show
November 17, 2005
Capote a film directed by Bennett Miller, based on the biography by Gerald Clarke
-
Philhellene
June 23, 2005
-
She Was from Seattle
June 23, 2005
-
Victims on Broadway II
June 9, 2005
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, directed by Edward Hall
-
Victims on Broadway
May 26, 2005
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, directed by David Leveaux
-
Correction
February 10, 2005
-
Alexander, the Movie!
January 13, 2005
Alexander a film directed by Oliver Stone
-
Pictures from an Institution
December 16, 2004
I Am Charlotte Simmons
by Tom Wolfe
-
Nero’s Deadline
December 16, 2004
-
For the Birds
December 2, 2004
Frogs by Aristophanes, adapted by Burt Shevelove and Nathan Lane, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and directed by Susan Stroman
-
One of Their Gods
July 15, 2004
-
Nailed!
July 15, 2004
Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction
by Dale Peck
-
A Little Iliad
June 24, 2004
Troy a film directed by Wolfgang Petersen
-
The Strange Music of Horace
May 13, 2004
Horace, the Odes: New Translations by Contemporary Poets
edited by J.D. McClatchy
-
Winged Messages
February 12, 2004
Angels in America directed by Mike Nichols, screenplay by Tony Kushner, based on his play.
-
David Oppenheim’s Case
January 15, 2004
-
It’s Only a Movie
December 18, 2003
Kill Bill—Volume 1 a film directed by Quentin Tarantino
-
The Fate of a Humanist
November 20, 2003
Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna
by Peter Singer
-
In Search of Sappho
August 14, 2003
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
translated from the Greek by Anne Carson
-
After the Fall
July 3, 2003
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
-
Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf
March 13, 2003
The Hours a film directed by Stephen Daldry, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham, with a screenplay by David Hare
-
The Bad Boy of Athens
February 13, 2003
Medea by Euripides, directed by Deborah Warner
The Children of Herakles by Euripides, directed by Peter Sellars
-
Novel of the Year
January 16, 2003
The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
-
Mighty Hermaphrodite
November 7, 2002
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
-
The Two Oscar Wildes
October 10, 2002
The Importance of Being Earnest a film written and directed by Oliver Parker, based on the play by Oscar Wilde
-
Bitter-Sweet
June 27, 2002
Private Lives a play by Noël Coward, directed by Howard Davies
Long Island Sound a play by Noël Coward, directed by Scott Alan Evans
-
The Greek Way
April 11, 2002
Big Love by Charles L. Mee
-
When Not in Greece
March 28, 2002
Iphigeneia at Aulis by Euripides, directed by Shepard Sobel
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, directed and designed by Tadashi Suzuki
-
Harold Pinter’s Celebration
October 4, 2001
Harold Pinter Festival presented by the Lincoln Center Festival 2001
The Spaces Between the Words: A Tribute to Harold Pinter presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center
The Room
by Harold Pinter
The Homecoming
by Harold Pinter
Landscape
by Harold Pinter
Monologue by Harold Pinter
A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter
One for the Road
by Harold Pinter
Mountain Language
by Harold Pinter
Ashes to Ashes
by Harold Pinter
Celebration
-
Boy Wonder
September 20, 2001
The Last Samurai
by Helen DeWitt
-
Double Take
June 21, 2001
The Producers book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, music and lyrics by Mel Brooks, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
-
Breaking Out
March 29, 2001
The Throne of Labdacus Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Supernatural Love: Poems 1976–1992
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
-
Tragedy in Denver
January 11, 2001
Tantalus
Tantalus: Ten New Plays on Greek Myths by John Barton
-
On ‘The Invention of Love’: Another Exchange
October 19, 2000
-
‘The Invention of Love’: An Exchange
September 21, 2000
-
The Tale of Two Housmans
August 10, 2000
The Invention of Love a play by Tom Stoppard, directed by Blanka Ziska. February 9-April 2, 2000, at the Wilma Theater, Philadelphia.
The Invention of Love
by Tom Stoppard
-
Not an Ideal Husband
April 27, 2000
Euripides’ Alcestis
translated and adapted by Ted Hughes
-
The Cemetery Dream
May 30, 2013
For a period of two or three years during the late 1980s or early 1990s I repeatedly dreamt the same terrifying dream. Once a week sometimes, sometimes every other week, sometimes twice a week or more, it would be waiting for me as soon as I dropped off, identical each time in every detail.
-
Daniel Mendelsohn at Town Hall
March 15, 2013
-
Daniel Mendelsohn on Constantine Cavafy
November 24, 2008
-
Reading in a World of Images
October 6, 2008