Careerism
Story Stream
Credentialist Cretins September 23, 2024
I’ve noticed something about literary, chattering-class New York: no one really talks about politics anymore. Everybody even seems to be talking about politics less as the election approaches. Political discourse is largely avoided, and deeply uncool...
Sally Rooney Thinks Career Growth Is Overrated September 23, 2024
The arrival on Sept. 24 of Sally Rooney’s new novel, “Intermezzo,” is one of this fall’s biggest publishing events — not only for the legion of devoted readers hungry for new fiction from the 33-year-old Irish author, but also for the literati ready ...
The Unnecessary Doom of 'Megalopolis' September 23, 2024
Few directors have a more legendary filmography than Francis Ford Coppola, the mind behind The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. But Megalopolis, hitting cinemas this weekend, is the most ambitious project of his career. For Co...
Rejecting Rejection September 20, 2024
The late philosopher Gilles Deleuze is known for his concept of the rhizome, defined as a network that connects any point to any other point. The most obvious example of a rhizome is the internet: instead of having a linear structure, the internet al...
This Pop Star Is a Fitting Icon for Generation Z September 17, 2024
To make it as a pop star in the age of TikTok, you need a few tricks up your sleeve.Firstly, you need to have an ambiguous gender. Think Sam Smith. He revitalized his career after a lull by putting on a pair of chaps and calling himself a “they/them....
Clint Eastwood’s Law September 16, 2024
In the course of his seven-decade career, Clint Eastwood has come to be identified with a single striking proposition. Appearing as a hard-bitten detective, a nondescript pilot, or an aging boxing coach, he advances the claim that upholding a system—...
Yuval Noah Harari’s Apocalyptic Vision September 12, 2024
“About 14 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being.” So begins Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, and so began one of the 21st century’s most astonishing academic careers...
The Great American Malaise September 11, 2024
An observation. There are few interesting and new political ideas, and few innovative works of imaginative literature. Politics and literature are both on a decline; political and literary genius are increasingly rare. American politics and literatur...
Kesha Has Earned the Right to Be Crazy September 11, 2024
For the first time in Kesha’s career, the only person she’s answering to is her own damn self. This summer, following a lengthy legal battle against her former producer Dr. Luke — whom she accused of sexual assault in 2013 — the singer-songwriter dro...
Celebrating the Centennial of the Most Underappreciated American of Our Time September 06, 2024
The following essay is adapted from the recently released book Lessons in Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living from Ten Extraordinary Americans (HarperCollins) September 7th marks the one-hundredth birthday of one of the most extraordinary and inspiring...
The Tale of Two Tim Burtons September 05, 2024
“A small but significant relief.”“A return to joy.”These are just two of the early reviews greeting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s new sequel to the 1988 horror comedy that was his second feature film. After two decades of diminishing returns ...
In the Field with Robert Capa September 04, 2024
In 1932, when Robert Capa’s career began, photographers were viewed as documentarians. Their names were often omitted from magazines, captions under their pictures were riddled with typos, and negatives and prints were frequently lost. Four years lat...
How Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Do It September 03, 2024
For 30 years now, Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings have been making music together. Their country-folk songs, delivered in beautiful two-part harmony and often featuring Rawlings’ intricate guitar work, are steeped with a century’s worth ...
‘Wolfs’ Review September 03, 2024
The movie-stars-are-over era has been overstated. If audiences are now drawn to movies not for stars but for franchise concepts, I’m not sure how to fit the career of Timothée Chalamet into that; Emma Stone and Zendaya would also like a word. That sa...
All 53 Live-Action Tom Hanks Movies, Ranked September 02, 2024
Tom Hanks made his big-screen debut in an unremarkable 1980 slasher cheapie called He Knows You’re Alone. And based on that inauspicious start, it’s safe to say that no one could have predicted that he would go on to become a two-time Best Actor Osca...
Work-Life Imbalance September 02, 2024
For most of her career, the novelist Danzy Senna has maintained a cagey relationship to the politics of representation. Her debut novel, Caucasia—a sweeping bildungsroman about a mixed-race girl teetering on the color line—thrust her into the spotlig...
