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The year 2011 saw the release of two movies — one, an auteurist masterpiece by Lars von Trier starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte... Read More

My first celebrity crush was not a traditional heartthrob, like Twilight star Taylor Lautner, or a pop star like Jesse McCartney, or any of... Read More

Every nation sustains itself with mythmaking. This is why Augustus commissioned Virgil to write The Aeneid at the moment the emperor was... Read More

Already, there are things I know I would change if I could. So much of it is just time. Then, there’s the weather. For the better part... Read More

There’s a new Criterion Channel series called “Odysseys” that is clearly meant as a tie-in with Christopher Nolan’s... Read More

It is fairly well known that a certain Greek and Latin professor named Maurice Schérer, born in Tulle in 1920, was also the iconic... Read More

Interviewing Rachel Aviv is a great way to source reading recommendations. The exacting essayist responds to my questions about her new book... Read More

Why Jay-Z? Out of every rapper, from Brooklyn to Compton, why did Shawn Carter emerge as the platonic ideal of the hip-hop superstar, an icon... Read More

Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that technology has become increasingly oppressive, just as it has lost interest in... Read More

THE ESSAYS IN Rachel Aviv’s fantastic new book, You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, are expanded and... Read More

I. Faculty and Object What follows is a reflection on theōria (contemplation) and the reality of form. In more general terms, I want to... Read More

In 2022, U.K. tech company Stability AI released Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model. Its... Read More

In 1775, a Harvard professor named Edward Wigglesworth sat down and did some math. The American colonies were doubling in population every 20... Read More

In the early 2010s, many of pop culture’s female heroines were known for a type of cool aloofness. Usually associated with an... Read More

When I tell my friends that I am reading N+1, they all say the same thing: it’s not what it used to be. Most of you, my readers, have... Read More

The era of social media addiction litigation is upon us. In a case heard this March, a Los Angeles jury decided against Meta (the parent... Read More

The Chateau Marmont, Hollywood’s supposedly hottest hangout, was dead. It was pushing 9:00 p.m., and I’d been standing by the... Read More

“Works of art are of an infinite solitude,” Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet, “and no means of approach... Read More

In 1949 Toni Morrison left Ohio. Aside from a brief stint in the ‘60s, she never lived there again. Yet Morrison remained invested in... Read More

A few weeks ago, the Scouts BSA troop my 11-year-old son belongs to faced a decision. With many of its older scouts graduating, there were... Read More

A couple weeks ago, the Bloomberg writer Joe Weisenthal went mini-viral on Twitter for something I think he’s largely on the money... Read More

In the summer of 1996, I left China for America to pursue graduate study. I have now lived in America for 30 years, longer than I lived in... Read More

Fifteen summers ago, as Obama’s first term was waning, I was newly eighteen and driving up I-75 through a thunderstorm to join my... Read More

This past May, the globally famous pop star Lizzo was spotted on the side of a busy road in Los Angeles, putting up her own posters. Wearing... Read More

It is said that when Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he paused for a few seconds before replying: “I think it... Read More

I waddled into the doctor’s office in the stripmall in Florida with 20 pounds of ankle weights strapped to each leg hidden under my... Read More

In the 18th century, the streets of East London were filled with flowers. Fuchsias, auriculas and star-of-Bethlehem grew from the window... Read More

One of my most played DVDs as a preteen growing up in Brazil was called Rouge: O sonho de ser uma Popstar [Rouge: The Dream of Being a Pop... Read More

Near the beginning of his long narrative poem “Letter to Lord Byron,” W. H. Auden writes, “I want a form that’s large... Read More

The parking lots on Prairie Street in Inglewood love to see me coming. Whenever I’m running late to a show at the Forum or... Read More

Who gets to be an artist? Or rather: who gets to be called one? These and other questions are present but unarticulated in ‘American... Read More

It’s tragic that the country’s 250th anniversary is coming at a time of profoundly performative division. In one part of America,... Read More

On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, J. Peder Zane speaks with Noah Rothman of the National Review about his... Read More

Independent bookstores and saddle-stitched fanzines will be the death of me yet. I was already a writer, of term papers for hire, yes, but... Read More

This is a curious novel with a lot of moving parts which are coordinated well. Like Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Rachel Kushner’s... Read More

The third-oldest college in the United States is small and, to borrow a word from the headline of a recent positive article about it in The... Read More