Ahead of the Diminishing World

Most of the bohemians Alice Neel painted were far from my own queer milieu in downtown New York—but when she turned to that world she captured it with energy and defiance. 

September 8, 2024

Mode for Joe

The tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson was at once a vessel of tradition and a Romantic individualist, a consummate professional in an art form that lionized rebels.

September 6, 2024

Desert Visions

The flamingos were listening to and watching me and I was listening to and watching them. We were reading one another.

September 4, 2024

‘An Ass-Backward Sherlock Holmes’

Over seven seasons on NBC, Columbo put a charming, shambolic gloss on the crime show. Now it has a new generation of imitators. 

August 25, 2024

Somali and American, a Minnesotan Community

Established by European settlers in the nineteenth century, it was once referred to as “White Cloud.” But today, this town of 68,000 inhabitants has seen a growing number of Somali refugees arrive in the last two decades to work in meat factories or to attend the local campus of the state university.

July 2, 2019

The Power Brokers

A recent history centers the Lakota and the vast territory they controlled in the story of the formation of the United States.

December 3, 2020 issue

The People’s Choice

When Jesse Ventura revealed that he does not wear underwear, Fruit of the Loom sent him 12,000 pairs of undershorts. He donated them to two charities. Even boorishness, in the alchemy of this moment, became a benefaction. The citizens of Minnesota treat Ventura as a sly practical joke they are playing on themselves.

August 12, 1999 issue

The Frog Prince

One of Garrison Keillor’s greatest gifts is his ability to modulate from realism to fantasy, or from low farce to high comedy.

November 24, 1988 issue

The Heights of Charm

“Though all FDR’s medical advice indicated the job might kill him, he had grown into it. It was what he did and who he was. His love for it was so obvious that millions would have cried out in disbelief if told that he was quitting.”

September 29, 2016 issue

The Ages of Jackson

“If the frontier was the force driving the Jacksonian upheaval, how to account for the preoccupation in the pamphlet literature by Jackson’s supporters with problems of a commercial society—with monopoly, with banking, with the business cycle, with the unequal distribution of the fruits of labor, with workingmen, with trade unions, with class conflict?”

December 7, 1989 issue

The Party Isn’t Over

“Carter is criticized for his Georgia mafia, his personal righteousness, his remaining an ‘outsider’ even while in office. But all of these are necessary if he is to retain some claim upon the South. Denied the easy appeal of Wallace and Nixon to repression and veiled racism, he must cling to the distinctive style that links him to the South.”

June 15, 1978 issue

Buchanan Redux

“James Buchanan’s great accomplishment as president was to relieve Lincoln of the burden of provoking the Civil War.”

August 8, 1974 issue

Flaubert’s Planet

Do novelists, and their readers, bear some responsibility for the climate crisis?

July 21, 2022 issue

A Hotter Russia

The cliché, avidly promoted by Moscow, is that Russia will be a relative winner in climate change, but a new book argues that the country will find itself in trouble.

June 23, 2022 issue

Reasons for Concern

The IPCC’s latest report, with warnings for supply chains and food security, may be the most suspense-filled document in human history.

March 9, 2022

A Sort of Buzzing Inside My Head

Whether ChatGPT passes the Turing Test is a less troubling question than what Alan Turing meant by “intelligence.”

June 25, 2023

DeepL Edizioni

As machine translation software grows more sophisticated, could it entirely replace human translators?

March 22, 2023

Court v. Chatbot

In a recent experiment, chatGPT showed a more developed moral sense than the Supreme Court’s current conservative supermajority.

December 26, 2022

Whose Country?

It is impossible to talk about the blues, country, or where the two might overlap without talking about race, authenticity, and contemporary America’s relationship to its past.

November 23, 2023 issue

Bob Dylan, Historian

Across the six decades of his career, the singer-songwriter has mined America’s past for images, characters, and events that speak to the nation’s turbulent present.

June 19, 2021

The Royal Blues

Dinah Washington’s music is fiery, uncompromising, and devoid of self-pity. She was a rarity among singers, male or female, in the popular music of her era: an unflinching, even merciless figure who was also sensual and musically sophisticated.

June 23, 2005 issue

The You and Me that Used to Be

“Looking back, I am aware that much of my life took place to music as if it were a film with a score: phonograph or radio interminably on, conversations held under the sound of music because sometimes when there was no music and we were driving or sitting around or drinking in a bar, an awkward silence hovered. Something necessary was missing. Things did not go on well without music.”

November 4, 1971 issue

A ‘Moral, Strategic, and Diplomatic Abyss’

In the latest round of disputes within Israel’s ruling coalition, the eliminationist, messianic far right seems poised to triumph. 

July 2, 2024

Acts of Language

Amid the actual violence of Israel’s assault on Gaza, why have so many writers treated pro-Palestine speech as a threat?

June 13, 2024

Israel’s Universities: The Crackdown

Last October, Palestinian students and academic staff in Israel faced unprecedented penalties for their speech. Now the repression persists. 

June 5, 2024

A View from Cairo

The Egyptian government’s repression of its citizens and the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine are inextricably linked.

May 12, 2024

Son of the Thin Man

“I suspect a lot of writers develop their style to offset qualities they otherwise find lacking in themselves.”

September 7, 2024

Gregor Samsa in Mexico

“Truth—open, public truth—is under attack both by organized crime and by the state itself.”

August 31, 2024

Taking the Joke Further

“What makes for a good piece of written humor is another of the mysteries of art.”

August 24, 2024

Caribbean Voices

“There’s a kind of earnestness, a kind of humor that is very particular to the Caribbean and its tradition of picong—bold, verbal jousting.”

August 17, 2024

Why Do You Do It This Way?

Episode Eleven of “The Critic and Her Publics”

July 9, 2024

The Tuning Fork in the Ear

Episode Ten of “The Critic and Her Publics”

June 25, 2024

The Problem of Other Minds

Episode Nine of “The Critic and Her Publics”

June 11, 2024

Documents of Mundanity

Episode Eight of “The Critic and Her Publics”

May 28, 2024