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I’ve admired Scott McClanahan’s writing for at least a decade. His writing is straightforward, direct, and clear. He writes what... Read More

When I set out to examine the state of tennis footwear in 2026, I knew there was one man I needed to speak to. At 41 years old, Vicente... Read More

It is a sunny July morning in the Midwest, one of those days when it starts off cool, the dew lingering a while on the grass and the... Read More

Like all good Americans, I need constant airflow. Temperature is not so important but stagnant unmoving air is death. What I need is a... Read More

I went into Tony, Matt Johnson’s new Anthony Bourdain biopic, as I imagine many people in the food world did: hesitant and somewhat... Read More

A series of minor events — a dinner party, a holiday in La Spezia, a poorly attended funeral — make up two years in the middling... Read More

Most everyone in my part of the world can feel, at some level, that we’re stuck. The culture, the institutions, the ideas, the leaders... Read More

On a recent morning commute, I sat on a train in one of those awkward four-person configurations with a shared table. Across from me sat a... Read More

I want to live in the world of Ted Lasso. Not because the grass is always cut and everyone smiles a mile wide—frankly, that all screams... Read More

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham makes three-point shots from half-court while barely breaking a sweat. But while her on-court swagger... Read More

After inflaming a culture war and causing her teammates and colleagues to be bombarded with hypothetical questions for weeks due to her... Read More

Many Americans have assumed that if you want a serious education in history, philosophy, or literature, you must go to college, preferably a... Read More

Thanks so much to all the people who subscribed after my first post. I was not expecting that; very heartening to see people’s interest... Read More

In another timeline, we would’ve gotten the first true blockbuster adaptation of The Odyssey about 20 years ago, probably starring Sean... Read More

When I was a child, my parents were judicious about what they would allow me to watch. Cartoons were tightly limited, but Turner Classic... Read More

In the middle of the 1930s, a young English schoolmaster, Wystan Hugh Auden, began writing a torrent of tremendous poems. Some are rollicking... Read More

“It’s not like years ago,” croons Michael Stipe on R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming,” the spare, piano-driven... Read More

Gen Z hates work. That seems fair enough, at least at first glance. At the same time, the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, is complaining that... Read More

All writers can be vain and insipid and, because they are writers, they must fight off the persistent temptation to make everything that... Read More

There are two novels dominating reading clubs and the Amazon Best Sellers list this summer: Yesteryear and The Correspondent. Yesteryear... Read More

Years ago, I had an intense relationship with a man who was brilliant and deeply interesting to talk to. I didn’t doubt he felt... Read More

When Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa died at 89 in Lima in 2025, many Latin American commentators in mainstream and social media... Read More

A century ago, the philosopher Georg Lukacs diagnosed the modern age as afflicted with a “transcendental homelessness.” A similar... Read More

It’s said that the algorithm will be the ruination of the person and of society. Never having learned to code, I can’t say for... Read More

No city better captures the contradictions of twenty-first-century America than San Francisco. The capital of the AI revolution is also a... Read More

For as long as it’s been around, we haven’t been sure how to feel about it. The utopians had their favored metaphors: cyberspace;... Read More

There’s a Criterion Channel series paying tribute to director Jonathan Demme that, as short as it is, makes clear that Demme is due for... Read More

Narrative poetry shouldn’t need justification. Its roots are as deep as literature itself. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a poem, as are the... Read More

The witch hunt is on, people. I know you can smell it in the air. Everyone is worrying about AI. Is it in your book? Are you telling the... Read More

IN 2022, A DECADE after her death, Jacqueline Harpman, the Belgian psychoanalyst and novelist, went viral on TikTok. Harpman’s 1995... Read More

During the summer of 2003 I was a crewman aboard the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Atlantis—the mothership for the... Read More

There is a scene early on in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that is breathtaking and an indication of the film could have been. It’s not a... Read More

Before we get to today’s topic, here’s a brief: WORLD CUP EPILOGUE My wife, Michelle Kaufman, a professional sportswriter,... Read More