There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
WSJ Op-Ed: How Solzhenitsyn Found Himself—And God
How Legos went from humble toy to criminal black market item fueled by L.A. heists Los Angeles Times
Mysterious monoliths are appearing across the world. Here’s what we know. Vox
What If We’re Stuck Down Here? Defector
The Truth About English Grammar by Geoffrey K Pullum review – the pants rule and other pipe dreams
Articles of Note
Among the canceled. Here's what Ilya Shapiro learned from the campaign to get him fired... more »
New Books
Late style and lean sentences. “I used to try to be original. Now I try to be clear and essential”... more »
Essays & Opinions
Why are there so few conservative professors, and what should be done about it? Steven Teles elaborates... more »
The man who eviscerated Freud. Frederick Crews, a merciless adversary, is dead at 91... more »
New Books
The most famous hysteric. Bertha Pappenheim was not only a typical patient but also a window into the origin of Freud’s theory of mind... more »
Essays & Opinions
Hayek and Freud. The former detested the latter, though both were attuned to the power of subconscious knowledge... more »
Thoreau had a great zest for the extended metaphor, which he regarded as both a literary device and profound truth... more »
New Books
Pipe down, Strunk & White. Ignore Orwell on politics and language. And everything you've been told about grammar is wrong... more »
Essays & Opinions
Andrea Long Chu on Rachel Cusk: "To question the possibility of female art is, ultimately, to question the possibility of female thought"... more »
Why archives matter. They can be what distinguishes those writers whose influence endures from those lost to history... more »
New Books
"An awful lot can go wrong when we crack wise. Perhaps if we were angels our sense of morality would govern our sense of humor, but we’re no angels"... more »
Essays & Opinions
Art and artifice. The former is an instrument of transcendence, the latter a homogenizing force. Donna Tartt explains... more »
The fame economy sells artists, not art. But what happens when a work of art is its own explanation, no personal brand required?... more »
New Books
The broken oracle of Silicon Valley. Want a sober assessment of what computers can and cannot contribute to the human project? Don't ask Ray Kurzweil... more »
Essays & Opinions
Forty years after his death, can we finally see Foucault clearly, without distortions or illusions? Probably not... more »
Orwell and "Orwellian." Would the writer be saddened to learn that his name has become synonymous with all the things that he vehemently opposed?... more »
New Books
If you can’t conduct daily life with decency, should your critical judgments be trusted? Consider Susan Sontag and George Steiner... more »
Essays & Opinions
"If a creative is an artist without the art, then a Ph.D. in creativity is the perfect product for an arts school that has dropped the human from the humanities"... more »
It began with a suspicious email. It led to Laura Kipnis's agreeing to become an AI bot in an effort to create a new way to read... more »
New Books
The celebrity-magazine profile has gone the way of, well, magazines. They've faded in importance. But, oh, the golden age... more »
Essays & Opinions
"Criticism lit people up, stirred them, made them reconsider what they value and how," says Namwali Serpell. Is that still true?... more »
Andrew O’Hagan is perched atop the London literary scene he so relishes skewering... more »
New Books
Step aside, Hemingway. The expatriate Parisian milieu after World War I was dominated by American women... more »
Essays & Opinions
Fairy tales take both evil and good seriously. They are truthful. We do kids no favors by sanitizing them... more »
A gulf supposedly separates “traditional” and “modern” parenting styles. The truth is more complicated, and more interesting... more »
New Books
God’s ghostwriters. Were the Gospels recorded out of conviction? Or were they the work of enslaved scribes?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Dance trends are as much the products of money and institutional support as of artistic talent. Consider Martha Graham and George Balanchine... more »
The threat of "indoctrination" is everywhere. How did a military term become a culture-war imprecation?... more »
New Books
What explains the human journey from grunting past to garrulous present?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Meghan O'Rourke is ambivalent about ambivalence. It speaks to what we could be, the voice of our lives and of our unled lives... more »
When Evelyn met Graham. Waugh and Greenedidn't agree on much, but they somehow sustained a most remarkable friendship ... more »
New Books
Everyone wants to get things done. Cue the productivity gurus, patient geniuses supposedly accomplishing great things... more »
Essays & Opinions
Articulating life in your own words is central to the human experience. Allowing AI to do this for us is an act of self-erasure... more »
The new eugenics. Emerging technology is about to present parents with a set of ethical questions that few have thought seriously about ... more »
New Books
Northrop Frye was the leading humanist scholar of his time, until he fell out of favor. What happened? The '60s... more »
Essays & Opinions
What, exactly, is a paradigm shift? The concept has become unmoored from the term... more »
Articles of Note
Is decadence merely the reckless pursuit of self-indulgence? Or is it a set of values worth holding dear?... more »
New Books
The other Mozart. Maria Anna Mozart was a musical prodigy. Then her father sent her home to marry — a fate shared by many female pianists... more »
Essays & Opinions
Addiction can make for great art. And great art can depict addiction in seductive ways. Thus Nan Goldin... more »