Politics Literature Arts Ideas

Essays

Darryl Pinckney

Our Lady of Deadpan

Joan Didion’s genius was at exploring the paradoxes and contradictions in the stories we tell ourselves.

February 10, 2022 issue

Peter Brooks

Visions of Waste

The American Scene is Henry James’s indictment of what Americans had made of their land.

March 24, 2022 issue

Ange Mlinko

His Nemesis Was Stupidity

Baudelaire thought the scope of his influence would be limited by the perfection of his poetry, which sailed over the heads of the masses.

April 7, 2022 issue

Ursula Lindsey

Refusing Silence in Egypt

Even as the Sisi regime tries to obliterate the story of the Arab Spring, some Egyptian writers remain committed to its memory and ideals.

April 21, 2022 issue

Dan Chiasson

Frost at Midnight

A new, beautifully edited volume of Robert Frost’s letters finds him at the height of his artistic powers while suffering a series of losses almost unimaginable to the fortunate among us.

December 16, 2021 issue

Irving Howe

Finding Babel in the Drawer

“Speak the name of Isaac Babel,” wrote Irving Howe, “and one phrase comes insistently to mind: a writer of genius.”

December 16, 2021 issue

Elaine Blair

Quick Words, Long View

Like many of her narrators, Lydia Davis is a taxonomist of daily life.

December 2, 2021 issue

Yuri Slezkine

Arias in the Archive

Maria Stepanova wants to memorialize the dead in her family but is conflicted about the very possibility—and morality—of the quest.

November 18, 2021 issue

The Latest

Miranda Seymour

‘Turbulence and Misery’

Anguish, provoked by her acute sense of physical and social inadequacy, was essential for Jean Stafford’s literary talent to flourish.

July 21, 2022 issue

Jarrett Earnest

A Proliferation of Beauties

The critic Dave Hickey almost single-handedly remade the practice of writing about art in the 1980s and 1990s, even as he provoked outrage in the institutional art world.

June 23, 2022 issue

Christopher Benfey

The Hum of Humanity

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

May 12, 2022 issue

Merve Emre

The Act of Persuasion

The drama of Elizabeth Hardwick’s life emanated from an elemental restlessness and a desire for sovereignty over her intellect and emotion.

April 21, 2022 issue

Simon Callow

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pianist

Jeremy Denk’s memoir is not just about piano lessons but about life lessons—how the artist creates a self.

April 21, 2022 issue

John Banville

The Imaginative Imperative

Jed Perl’s Authority and Freedom is a defense of the autonomy of the arts against the stranglehold of relevance.

April 21, 2022 issue

Christopher Benfey

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.

November 15, 2021

Caroline Fraser

Murder Is My Business

In the true crime genre’s latest iteration, writers, reporters, bloggers, documentary filmmakers, and podcast hosts have taken a soiled brand and turned it into a collective exercise in retributive justice, recording and correcting the history of sexual violence.

July 22, 2021 issue

Mark O’Connell

Uncanny Planet

A new collection of essays by Nathaniel Rich argues that there is no going back to whatever might be meant by “nature.”

July 22, 2021 issue

Christine Smallwood

The Power of Questions

Jacqueline Rose’s latest book, On Violence and On Violence Against Women, takes up a subject she has not covered before: gendered abuse and harassment.

July 22, 2021 issue