July 20, 2023 issue

Adam Thirlwell

The Trouble with Truth

Emmanuel Carrère’s Yoga is his latest variation on the idea that humans live on an edge, a border beyond which life can be emptied of all meaning.

Yoga

by Emmanuel Carrère, translated from the French by John Lambert

Carolina A. Miranda

‘Places That Weren’t Supposed to Be Places’

Three exhibitions of Caribbean art in New York, San Juan, and Chicago show artists intent on rewriting the history of the region.

no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria

an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, November 23, 2022–April 23, 2023

Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today

an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, November 19, 2022–April 23, 2023; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, October 5, 2023–February 24, 2024; and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, April 6–July 8, 2024

Tropical Is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime

an exhibition at the Americas Society, New York City, September 7–December 17, 2022; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, February 18–July 30, 2023

Terrance Hayes

How to Fold

a poem

Darryl Pinckney

Black Talk on the Move

Lover Man, a newly reissued collection of melancholy stories by Alston Anderson, one of the lost names of black literature, depicts small-town southern life and postwar migration to the North.

Lover Man

by Alston Anderson, with an afterword by Kinohi Nishikawa

Fintan O’Toole

Unrepentant Pence

Mike Pence’s religiosity may be entirely sincere, but it is also instrumental and highly politicized. He, like Trump, is in show business.

Daniel Mendelsohn

Robert Gottlieb (1931–2023)

Anahid Nersessian

The Republic of Translation

Two new translations of poetry travel from ancient Sardinia to modern Paris.

Historiae

by Antonella Anedda, translated from the Italian and the Sardinian by Patrizio Ceccagnoli and Susan Stewart

Common Life

by Stéphane Bouquet, translated from the French by Lindsay Turner

Laura Marsh

The Pregnancy Plot

In Reproduction, Louisa Hall combines a science-fiction riff on Frankenstein with the isolating reality of pregnancy in the contemporary United States.

Reproduction

by Louisa Hall

Jeffrey Toobin

Keeping Speech Robust and Free

The case of New York Times v. Sullivan set a vital standard in libel law. Could the clash between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems dismantle it—and at what cost?

Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan

by Samantha Barbas

James Walton

The Hemon Variations

After wild forays, Aleksandar Hemon has written an achingly responsible new book.

The World and All That It Holds

by Aleksandar Hemon

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Life Made Light

The twenty-eight Vermeer paintings assembled at the Rijksmuseum this year were a testament to how he is understood today: as an artist of the interior, a master of subjects at once alluring and enigmatic.

Vermeer

an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, February 10–June 4, 2023

Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection

by Gregor J.M. Weber

Vermeer and the Art of Love

by Aneta Georgievska-Shine

Kerri Arsenault

Vacationland

Morgan Talty’s stories about a Penobscot family are set where Maine’s millions of tourists don’t tend to go: in places damaged by toxic pollutants or opioids, bankrupted by government inaction, devoured by poverty, haunted by our country’s colonial past.

Night of the Living Rez

by Morgan Talty

Cynthia Zarin

At Putney

a poem

Joyce Carol Oates

None-Too-Gay Divorcées

Ursula Parrott’s 1929 novel Ex-Wife was a scandalous, best-selling portrayal of the era’s “new woman,” but in her own life she remained trapped in conventional views of marriage and relationships.

Ex-Wife

by Ursula Parrott, with a foreword by Alissa Bennett and an afterword by Marc Parrott

Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott

by Marsha Gordon

Gabriel Winslow-Yost

‘This Is Not Your Grave’

A new graphic novel by Nick Drnaso lingers in the desire for change while Tommi Parrish’s latest focuses on the hard work of actually making change happen.

Acting Class

by Nick Drnaso

Men I Trust

by Tommi Parrish

Issue Details

Cover art
Jesús Cisneros: Islands, 2023
Series art
Leslie Stein: Abstractions, 2023