Christopher Benfey

Provocation from Another Soul

“Stanley Cavell was a dazzling teacher. You felt that he was opening his private studio to you, showing you how philosophy gets done rather than simply reporting his findings after the fact.”

The Hum of Humanity

The autobiographical turn in Stanley Cavell’s later work illuminates his extraordinarily varied philosophical interests.

‘River’ Runs

In the Kingdom of Coincidence

I don’t have a theory of chance connections—I don’t see them as part of a divine plan or dictated by the stars—but, like other writers, I find them richly suggestive.

Exile on Main Street

A new book argues that Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology helped overturn old notions of the virtuous New England village as the prototype of American life.

‘Such a Lovely Turmoil’

Albert Pinkham Ryder was described as the American Van Gogh; Jackson Pollock called him “the only American master who interests me.” Why has his reputation waned?

‘A Searing Bolt of Turquoise’

Hummingbirds, whose psychedelic feathers cover even more remarkable physiological adaptations, are dying out at alarming rates owing to climate change, but humans have long had a deadly fascination with these startling creatures.

Pranksters and Puritans

Peter Mancall’s biography of Thomas Morton discusses Morton’s attempts to provoke the Pilgrims and undercut the Puritans.

Life’s Merry-Go-Round

From Rilke to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the carousel has embodied the sadness of lost innocence. And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges—even on Donald Trump.

The Mystery of the Missing Viola

A parable of the prodigal player whose instrument was lost and now is found.

Missed Steps

So many steps! So many turns! A leap. A landing. And done. The other dancers had no trouble remembering the steps. I had trouble.

The Haiku of Confinement

Bedridden in his Odéon apartment, Richard Wright spent the last year and a half of his life writing haiku.

The Opposite of Ordinary

Pandemic Journal, April 6–12

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Verlyn Klinkenborg in East Chatham, Hugh Eakin in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Dalia Hatuqa in Amman, and more.

The Year of the Amazon?

If Jeff Bezos named his firm after the Amazon River, how did the river itself come to be called the Amazon? Was the rainforest once inhabited by golden-crowned women warriors mounted on fleet-footed steeds?

Bowling with Melville

Instead of writing an epic on whaling, could Melville have written the epic of bowling instead? Now that would have been “a ten-stroke” indeed.

How Rodin Kept His Feet on the Ground

Rodin himself rejected the idea of the idealized thinker with his head in the clouds rather than his feet in the dirt.

The Tragic Hubris of Kipling’s ‘If—’

“Kipling’s morality is imperialist only to the extent that it is closely linked to a specific historical reality,” wrote Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist leader and translator of “If—,” from one of Mussolini’s prisons, “but there are lessons in the poem for any social group struggling for political power.”

Webster’s Acrobatics

Cornering the Word Market