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Daniel Mendelsohn

Daniel Mendelsohn is Editor-at-Large at The New York Review and Professor of Humanities at Bard. His new collection of essays, Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones, will be published in October.  (April 2019)

@DAMendelsohnNYC

Great Synagogue of Bolechów, Bolekhiv, in present day Ukraine, 2001

Finding a Path Through the Odyssey

I was suffering from what the Greeks called aporia: a helpless, immobilized confusion, a lack of resources to find one’s way out of a problem.

September 7, 2020

Lucas Zwirner, Manohla Dargis, Antwaun Sargent, Jillian Steinhauer, and Daniel Mendelsohn at David Zwirner Gallery, September 23, 2019

The Power of the Critic

On September 23, 2019, The New York Review of Books and David Zwirner Books hosted “The Power of the Critic,” the first in a four-part series of public talks bringing together leading writers, artists, and thinkers to explore the role of power within the cultural sphere.

November 9, 2019

Stopping in Vilna: Stendhal & the Holocaust Trail

In Vilna, after three years of traveling in search of my family’s story, three years of interviewing people about the worst imaginable things, I couldn’t take it any more. Two things broke me.

October 1, 2019

Ingmar Bergman on the set of Fanny and Alexander, from the 1984 documentary The Making of Fanny and Alexander

Ingmar Bergman, Novelist

As he entered old age and grew increasingly exasperated with filmmaking, the director turned to fiction.

The Best Intentions

by Ingmar Bergman, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

Sunday’s Children

by Ingmar Bergman, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

Private Confessions

by Ingmar Bergman, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

April 18, 2019 issue

Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)

“I admire great writers, people with marvelous and beautiful minds, and always hope they will do something special and revealing.”

April 20, 2017 issue

Jason meeting Medea, with Amor between them; detail of a Sicilian red-figure cup, circa 350 BCE

How Greek Drama Saved the City

For the Athenians, tragedy was just as much about “the city” as it was about the individual

June 23, 2016 issue

‘Too Hard…To Take’

December 17, 2015 issue

Peter Hujar: Orgasmic Man, 1969; from Peter Hujar: Love & Lust, published last year by Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. A new exhibition, ‘Peter Hujar: 21 Pictures,’ will be on view at the gallery, January 7–March 5, 2016.

A Striptease Among Pals

Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘A Little Life’

A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

December 3, 2015 issue

Letter

Gerald Howard

‘Too Hard…To Take’

December 17, 2015 issue

Bluebeard Ex Machina

August 13, 2015 issue

Alicia Vikander as the robot Ava in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Charming, Superior Robots

We have been dreaming of robots since Homer

Her

a film directed by Spike Jonze

Ex Machina

a film directed by Alex Garland

June 4, 2015 issue

Letter

Geoffrey Brown

Bluebeard Ex Machina

August 13, 2015 issue

‘The death of Pentheus’; detail of a red-figure cup by the Athenian painter Douris, circa 480 BC

A Good Year for Dionysus

October 23, 2014 issue

The Bacchae: Ecstasy & Terror

September 25, 2014 issue

Letter

Joel Schechter

A Good Year for Dionysus

October 23, 2014 issue

Bronze head of Augustus with glass and alabaster eyes; from Meroë, Sudan, 27–25 BC

John Williams’s ‘Augustus’

The ‘Stoner’ author’s novel about the first emperor of Rome

August 14, 2014 issue

Patrick Leigh Fermor in Phlomochori, a village on the Mani peninsula, southern Peloponnese, Greece

The Genius of Patrick Leigh Fermor

On ‘The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos’

The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos

by Patrick Leigh Fermor, edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper

June 19, 2014 issue

The Women and the Thrones

Game of Thrones

a television series created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, based on A Song of Ice and Fire and George R.R. Martin

Dreamsongs, Volume 1

by George R.R. Martin

A Song of Ice and Fire

a fantasy series by George R.R. Martin:

A Game of Thrones

A Clash of Kings

A Storm of Swords

A Feast for Crows

A Dance with Dragons

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November 7, 2013 issue

The Cemetery Dream

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.

May 30, 2013

Changes of Fortune

June 20, 2013 issue