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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

In 2022 and early 2023, as Americans shed their masks and began congregating in public again after the end of COVID-19, a strange phenomenon... Read More

The Big Tech companies have spent $1 trillion on capital investment since the start of the artificial-intelligence boom. Pretty much all that... Read More

Somewhere in America right now, a 26-year-old is standing in his bathroom, downing his stack: creatine, a fistful of supplements, ashwagandha... Read More

The first one thousand fans through the gates of the Aqueduct Racetrack on the last Sunday of June received a commemorative vial of track... Read More

As if planning a first date weren’t stressful enough, a new expectation for guys has emerged: sending their date an Uber to pick them... Read More

The Smithsonian is still in the news, and, it seems, it’s the Swamp’s most soigné snake. Its American History Museum... Read More

Toward the end of his last novel, 2017’s The Sarah Book, Scott McClanahan reads to his children from a Sesame Street book. This is a... Read More

“Do we like the eyeliner or no?” Sombr is strutting across the stage, dragging the microphone stand by its neck and headbanging... Read More

They tread a landscape existentially threatened by human wreckage yet are drawn to their fellow species, intriguing and strangely... Read More

Halloween of 1981 arrives for the privileged heroes of FX/Hulu’s The Shards. Debbie (Hayes Warner), spoiled daughter of Hollywood... Read More

Why do so many people aspire to fame, and why do the children of celebrities—like Gracie Abrams—so often become the center of a... Read More

In Chicago, authenticity is everything. Chicagoans can sniff out a poser from a mile away—whether a fake foodie (ketchup on a hot dog?... Read More

I’d been working with a psychotherapist for nearly a year before I realized I was attracted to her. The shift happened about 10 months... Read More

It’s hard to believe this summer marks six decades since the Beatles, the greatest of pop-rock bands, released the album that truly... Read More

When the world needed Phoebe Bridgers the most, she vanished. It’s been six years since she released her breakout hit album Punisher... Read More