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Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: the writer who... Read More

At the start of this study of character formation, David Hein raises a tension that has bedeviled American conservatives ever since... Read More

What might a new aesthetics consist of in the visual arts? What follows is something of an answer. First though, it would be shoddy... Read More

Today is Valentine’s Day, so what to write, what to write? There’s Fragonard’s Progress of Love series at... Read More

For a young girl, the process of becoming aware of your body often involves learning what’s wrong with it before learning what’s... Read More

Indispensable during the Cold War, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writings remain essential for our times and troubles. This, for a number of... Read More

On Monday afternoon, a 16-year-old boy fell 50 feet down an internal access shaft inside one of the towers of New York City’s... Read More

Denis Johnson wrote about some of the most unlikable characters in American fiction, and yet he always managed to make readers care what... Read More

Tom Junod is considering the epitaphs of seditionists. We’re wandering the rows of Marietta Confederate Cemetery, not far from his home... Read More

Sixty years ago I was a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Sanford Meisner, the head of the school, was, with Lee Strasberg,... Read More

Thirty years ago this month, David Foster Wallace published Infinite Jest, a strangely tender novel despite almost seeming to troll the... Read More

If man was “created from animals,” as Charles Darwin wrote in one of his notebooks, from what animals was he... Read More

My friends in NBA media tell me that fixing tanking is a huge topic. I believe them, because I too have received long emails from subscribers... Read More

BUDAPEST—I was on a plane to Europe Sunday night as the Seahawks defeated the Patriots in what apparently was a very boring Super Bowl.... Read More

The drumbeat of criticism directed at Generation Z insists that something is wrong with them. As this cohort between the ages of 14... Read More

Most Oscar movies have no audience and few admirers and are instantly forgotten (name last year’s winner). One exception is Marty... Read More

Last summer, on work trips to Portland, Oregon, and New York, and in the fall, while visiting London and Paris, I went out of my way to meet... Read More

In 1988, approaching what he called ‘the dawn of the twilight’ of his life, Jean-Luc Godard had cause to reflect on an earlier... Read More

Meritocracy is like free trade. Countries or classes embrace it when it advantages them and view it more skeptically when they are no longer... Read More

The latest product that China has ripped off, refined, and resold to the United States is not a knockoff AI, or Shein leggings, or a $99 Temu... Read More

Have we as a culture moved on from the phenomenon of the “internet novel”? Each time I think the answer is a firm and resounding... Read More

Two of the buzziest — and most star-studded — movies world premiering in competition at this year’s Berlin Film... Read More

Director Emerald Fennell knows how to tap into a zeitgeist. Her 2020 film Promising Young Woman captured the high that #MeToo... Read More

“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” wrote Voltaire, usually translated to “the perfect is the enemy of the good,”... Read More

“The Mysticism of Money”: that was the brassily alliterative title of a 1922 essay published by Harold Loeb in Broom, the... Read More

The theremin is not powered by physical contact. It is a strange instrument that makes uncanny sounds and only exists because... Read More

The decline of religion remains a fundamental reality in most Western countries, particularly in Europe, where over 50% of those... Read More

Have you ever wondered why people believe the moon landing was faked, vaccines secretly poison us, and Mercury in retrograde can ruin your... Read More

The death of the actor Robert Duvall at the age of 95 – almost exactly a year after that of his friend Gene Hackman – brings to... Read More

Mohammed Hanif’s incendiary comic novel, Rebel English Academy, makes strong demands on American readers — and rewards them.... Read More

Outside the monographs of the academic historian—which, of course, are never read—every generation is reduced to three or four... Read More

Is literary culture in America on the decline? The decline of reading in all age groups is certainly well-documented and is grave cause... Read More