May 30, 2025
It is easy to understand the populist case against Harvard.
The elite Ivy League university holds an endowment worth more than $50 billion. For centuries, the richest, most powerful,...
May 23, 2025
From the BQE she caught the holy hell of it, the way smoke was streaming from burning steel. It was cinema, bad fiction, a plot point dreamed up as too ridiculous for art and...
May 13, 2025
Since releasing a new novel last week, I’ve been asked several times about the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. A vast majority of readers know me for my...
May 6, 2025
There were surely critics, in the middle of the 1960s, who had no concept of what was to come. The counterculture could feel faddish; so could New Hollywood, sexually explicit...
May 5, 2025
There’s a paragraph in Norman Podhoretz’s Making It, his polarizing if riveting account of a life in letters in midcentury America, that’s always stuck with...
April 29, 2025
In David Polonoff’s rollicking novel WannaBeat, a twentysomething named Philip Polarov tries to become a writer in 1970s San Francisco. Philip is middle-class and...
April 21, 2025
What’s an anti-woke intellectual warrior to do these days?
There are two clear paths: the victory lap or the firm turn against MAGA. Each is, in its own way, intellectually...
April 15, 2025
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I went to many rock shows in Williamsburg and Bushwick. The neighborhoods, like me, were a bit scruffier then. The glass monoliths had not yet...
April 14, 2025
These are peculiar and disorienting times for those who believe in the life of the mind. The old university systems, which were the bulwark of the postwar American boom, now seem in...
April 9, 2025
When I was young, I wanted to be a successful novelist. Success, in this sense, took on superficial, external forms that were predicated on a wholly twentieth century concept. Born...
March 28, 2025
Should we, in fact, reject our cultural elites? This is one of the more pressing questions of our volatile political moment. My id—my inner, nastier Ross...
March 27, 2025
The one bright spot for Democrats these days, it seems, is Bernie Sanders. It is an indication of the party’s sad state that the only figure aligned with it who is able to draw...
March 19, 2025
Sixty years ago this month, The Beach Boys Today! appeared in record stores across the country. The Beach Boys were, in 1965, one of the very few American rock acts to...
March 10, 2025
We live, largely, in a utilitarian world. This is not a state of affairs I welcome but it’s one, having survived the American educational system, I understand. Much of learning...
March 4, 2025
In the 2010s, a certain kind of social justice activist took a hard turn against the mainstream media. The rancor was of a different flavor than the Chomskyian critiques of corporate...
February 21, 2025
There is a new Marvel movie out and no one seems to care. No one, of course, is an exaggeration, a provocation, since there are obviously human beings buying tickets...
February 5, 2025
When I think about the artificial intelligence revolution, I keep returning to a simple dichotomy: need vs. want.
January 30, 2025
With Donald Trump, it is perpetually difficult to gauge what matters and what doesn’t — where does the bluster end and the change begin, and how seriously should we take...
January 28, 2025
The liberal critics demand evidence. This is nothing new, and I don’t blame them. I practice journalism, which is evidence-based, and I have been consuming Nate Silver since he...
January 21, 2025
The American republic is a sibilating beast; it has fifty mouths and one hundred eyes, and the blood on its fangs drips with love. It is sick and confused and outrunning death. It is...
May 30, 2025It is easy to understand the populist case against Harvard. The elite Ivy League university holds an endowment worth more than $50 billion. For centuries, the richest, most powerful,...
May 23, 2025From the BQE she caught the holy hell of it, the way smoke was streaming from burning steel. It was cinema, bad fiction, a plot point dreamed up as too ridiculous for art and...
May 13, 2025Since releasing a new novel last week, I’ve been asked several times about the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. A vast majority of readers know me for my...
May 5, 2025There’s a paragraph in Norman Podhoretz’s Making It, his polarizing if riveting account of a life in letters in midcentury America, that’s always stuck with...
April 29, 2025In David Polonoff’s rollicking novel WannaBeat, a twentysomething named Philip Polarov tries to become a writer in 1970s San Francisco. Philip is middle-class and...
April 21, 2025What’s an anti-woke intellectual warrior to do these days? There are two clear paths: the victory lap or the firm turn against MAGA. Each is, in its own way, intellectually...
April 14, 2025These are peculiar and disorienting times for those who believe in the life of the mind. The old university systems, which were the bulwark of the postwar American boom, now seem in...
April 9, 2025When I was young, I wanted to be a successful novelist. Success, in this sense, took on superficial, external forms that were predicated on a wholly twentieth century concept. Born...
March 28, 2025Should we, in fact, reject our cultural elites? This is one of the more pressing questions of our volatile political moment. My id—my inner, nastier Ross...
March 27, 2025The one bright spot for Democrats these days, it seems, is Bernie Sanders. It is an indication of the party’s sad state that the only figure aligned with it who is able to draw...
March 19, 2025Sixty years ago this month, The Beach Boys Today! appeared in record stores across the country. The Beach Boys were, in 1965, one of the very few American rock acts to...
March 10, 2025We live, largely, in a utilitarian world. This is not a state of affairs I welcome but it’s one, having survived the American educational system, I understand. Much of learning...
March 4, 2025In the 2010s, a certain kind of social justice activist took a hard turn against the mainstream media. The rancor was of a different flavor than the Chomskyian critiques of corporate...
February 21, 2025There is a new Marvel movie out and no one seems to care. No one, of course, is an exaggeration, a provocation, since there are obviously human beings buying tickets...
February 5, 2025When I think about the artificial intelligence revolution, I keep returning to a simple dichotomy: need vs. want.
January 30, 2025With Donald Trump, it is perpetually difficult to gauge what matters and what doesn’t — where does the bluster end and the change begin, and how seriously should we take...
January 28, 2025The liberal critics demand evidence. This is nothing new, and I don’t blame them. I practice journalism, which is evidence-based, and I have been consuming Nate Silver since he...
January 21, 2025The American republic is a sibilating beast; it has fifty mouths and one hundred eyes, and the blood on its fangs drips with love. It is sick and confused and outrunning death. It is...
