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Let’s say I have bought a book, a novel. I wait for a quiet hour, close the door to my room, sit in the most comfortable chair I have,... Read More

An interviewer once asked Patti Smith whether she’d always planned on becoming a rock musician, and she responded with a... Read More

Many writers level the following challenge at liberalism: it must either betray itself or fail to defend itself. Remain tolerant, and it will... Read More

Two summers ago, I bought a condo down the street from an empty lot. It was empty in one sense. There was a chain-link fence around the... Read More

The In Memoriam segment of this year’s Academy Award ceremonies lasted for 15 minutes. On a night when several winners’ speeches... Read More

When Niall Horan was a kid, before he became a wildly famous pop star overnight, he would tune into a whimsical late-’90s... Read More

La poesía no quiere adeptos, quiere amantes. —Federico García Lorca “The poetry of earth is never dead.” So... Read More

It is a great tribute to the profundity of Flannery O’Connor’s work that it continues to generate quality secondary literature... Read More

A new Netflix documentary takes viewers into “the manosphere,” a loose network of YouTubers, podcasters, live-streamers... Read More

On February 1, 2026, the day before Groundhog Day, in Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania, a driveway glazed with ice leads to an open garage door... Read More

There was a certain level of comic flourish when I, opening my Christmas presents this year, revealed of all things, a new biography of... Read More

I recently used economist Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty to explain why Jacinda Ardern, the former prime... Read More

On the opening page of The Inman Diary, the book’s editor makes a bold claim: this work “has no counterpart in any... Read More

Ian, I want to ask you about a couple themes from your recent essay “Burnout and Hope.” You wonder how to diagnose the cause of... Read More

You’re not hallucinating the great weirding of America. The visual evidence is everywhere. Start with what you can see. You’re in... Read More

Then: I loved being a college prof. That was my career for thirty years. If you get to do something for money, something you are good at,... Read More

Last night, the Americans exited the World Baseball Classic with their second straight silver medal, and the Venezuelan squad that took them... Read More

During the 15th century, the leading critics all agreed that the greatest works of art came from an unusual place. No, not a museum or church... Read More

Lately I’ve been promoting a novel, which means that interviewers sometimes ask me what I’ve been reading. I’m obliged to... Read More

After a newspaper profile of the “looksmaxxing” influencer Braden Peters, otherwise known as Clavicular, went viral last month,... Read More

When I was a curator and a museum director, I never went to the art fair held by the European Fine Art Foundation, or TEFAF, an annual... Read More

In 2014, the year Ben Lerner’s second novel, 10:04, came out, I was a recent college graduate doing freelance reporting for... Read More

Last April, 600 people gathered for a technology policy conference in downtown Washington, DC. The main speaker, former Google CEO Eric... Read More

Recently I heard a presentation by an engineer from OpenAI about the incredible transformations that will occur once we get to artificial... Read More

I recently found myself in a spirited public disagreement with a famous literary critic. Onstage at the front of the theater, two critics... Read More

For many Latinas who came of age after 1995, Shakira taught us exactly how to wield a guitar. She taught us how to assume a power stance.... Read More

Free-minded dissidents in the Soviet era—or today, in the climate of constrained freedoms in twenty-first-century Russia—may... Read More

I grew up in the early 2000s, in the dying days of the Marilyn Manson moral panic, when parents across the land sincerely believed that heavy... Read More