Literary representations of intoxication
Brno and campari made us intoxicated in late August it a city of many historical buildings and filled with students in every pub. Milan was born on April Fools’ Day 1929 in a small Moravian city, Brno, where his father, a pianist, served as the head of the state conservatory named after his mentor Leoš Janáček.
Milan Kundera has long been a cult sensation in the West. Will an array of critical charges — including misogyny — dull the passion?... Passion of Milan »
Aga of Tatranka fame courtesy of Fotografer Karel Plicka
Slow songs used to inspire slow dancing. Now they are more commonly the soundtrack for the sad and lonely...Tatranka had slow songs too »
Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould is a new book documenting the work of early 19th century naturalist artist Elizabeth Gould.
Artist and illustrator Elizabeth Gould is finally given the recognition she deserves in this gorgeous volume that includes hundreds of her stunning and scientifically precise illustrations of birds from nearly every continent.
Articles of Note
The musicians of Terezin. How the inmates of a Nazi concentration camp managed to create art ... more »
New Books
How to lie with statistics: “In politics it doesn’t really matter what the numbers are, so much as whose they are”... more »
Essays & Opinions
For Alasdair MacIntyre, doing moral philosophy from the margins is a necessary condition to seeing things clearly... more »
Articles of Note
"Historians! Put down your tools! Your labors are at an end. The scientists have finally solved history." Or something like that... more »
New Books
Martin Peretz, who helped define the liberal establishment even as he tweaked it, is at 84 persona non grata. “It’s a sodden coda”... more »
Essays & Opinions
In today’s novel, identity can be leveraged only to confirm that fiction speaks from experience; confession trumps imagination... more »
Articles of Note
The bulk of our cultural lives plays out online. Our artifacts are preserved in the cloud. Until they aren’t... more »
New Books
For the Bloomsbury set, clothing conventions – like other customs– were meant to be broken... more »
Essays & Opinions
Hunting for lost books. It’s possible to find them on the internet, of course, but that robs us of one of the things that gives life purpose... more »
Articles of Note
Ross Douthat, liberal America’s favorite conservative, makes reactionary views seem slightly ironic, and, thus, palatable... more »
New Books
For W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay’s fictionwas "filth" and made him feel like taking a bath. Now a McKay renaissance is afoot... more »
Essays & Opinions
Slow songs used to inspire slow dancing. Now they are more commonly the soundtrack for the sad and lonely... more »
Articles of Note
F. Scott Fitzgerald and the toll of early ambition. "Failure was the shadow that stalked him because anything less than perfection was unthinkable”... more »
New Books
“Aside from the fact that they’re all dead, the women of Surrealism have had a banner couple of years”... more »
Essays & Opinions
The case of the Crusoe Cabana. Why a lawsuit over a Miami nightclub hinged on the testimony of a scholar of 18th-century literature... more »
Articles of Note
In South Dakota, Joseph Horowitz saw the future of classical music in America. His name is Delta David Gier... more »
New Books
Whatever you have heard about trauma — from clinical definitions to literary uses to gauzy oversimplifications — probably stems from the work of Judith Herman... more »
Essays & Opinions
When it comes to DEI, it’s Ron DeSantis or Robin DiAngelo, whitewashing or wokeness — and nothing in between. There’s a better path... more »
Articles of Note
The font industry has always been cutthroat and volatile. Now looms a new menace: a private-equity-owned aspiring monopoly... more »
New Books
What happened to Naomi Wolf is what happened to wellness culture: Its principles gave way to paranoid individualism... more »
Essays & Opinions
What gives authority to a literary critic? Wit, discrimination, judgment, and advocacy, for starters. Merve Emre elaborates... more »
Articles of Note
Elif Batuman goes looking for a half-remembered Proust quote, via ChatGPT. The algorithm recommends she read all of In Search of Lost Time... more »
New Books
J.L. Austin, military man. How the Oxford philosopher became one of the most consequential British intelligence officers of World War II... more »
Essays & Opinions
Andrea Long Chu: “White Teeth remains by far the best thing [Zadie] Smith has ever written; what bad luck to have done it by 24!”... more »
Articles of Note
We imagine medieval inquisition to be all torture and confessions of Satanic activity. But a good deal of it was bland bureaucracy... more »
New Books
The trouble with genealogy: Fragments of evidence do not cohere into ironclad facts... more »
Essays & Opinions
"Stories are indispensable, nourishing and delightful,” says Ian Leslie. “They are also attacks on the rational immune system"... more »
Articles of Note
Milan Kundera has long been a cult sensation in the West. Will an array of critical charges — including misogyny — dull the passion?... more »
New Books
The quest for pocket parity. Long ago, everyone carried a purse. Then came a new feature of male dress... more »
Essays & Opinions
With the right input, ChatGPT can write a strong college essay. Is this the end of take-home writing assignments?... more »
Articles of Note
Why is it that a clock has 12 hours, an hour has 60 minutes, and a minute has 60 seconds?... more »
New Books
Don DeLillo, long anointed as a prophet, is surely “anticipating the involuntary mutations that await the posthumous"... more »
Essays & Opinions
What is the responsibility of art criticism? Is it directed at social justice? Enriching one’s sense of identity? Surrendering to the mysticism of art?... more »
Articles of Note
EP Thompson’s brother was executed for his dealings with Bulgarian anti-fascists. There was more to the story than a hero’s death... more »
New Books
Ancient Athens, Renaissance Florence, 20th-century Oxford: Why do certain places and times produce a clustering of philosophical genius?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Cold War liberalism was a catastrophe for liberalism, and yet its cause is championed again and again... more »
Articles of Note
Ever notice that your tongue tends to stick outwhen you’re focusing intently? Here’s why... more »
New Books
Kafka’s notebooks contain homoerotic passages, dreams of sausages, and his repeated self-flagellation: “Wrote nothing”... more »
Essays & Opinions
In a culture devoted to work, leisure is a lofty, slippery goal. Its fulfillment requires the cultivation of habits... more »
Articles of Note
What’s behind the blurb arms race? And can anything arrest publishings deepening dependence on inane, over-the-top praise?... more »
New Books
Is authoritative criticism a problem? No, criticism is not a passive medium of arbitration. It is an act of creation... more »
Essays & Opinions
“We are keen to nestle into a nice category,” says Matt Feeney. “This is a lot of things besides funny, but it’s also funny”... more »