by The Editors
January 27, 2025
We are a quarter of the way through the new century, and the state of high culture is not what it should be. Individuals are no less brilliant, but there is a clear institutional lack. It’s as if the great publishers, film producers, and record labels can no longer provide us the artistic nourishment that…
by Jesse Relkin
June 5, 2026
We live in an unprecedented moment for booksmaxxing. I don’t know how I could otherwise make my way through authors like Hannah Arendt and Jean Baudrillard — the latter of whom surely wrote not to be understood. With ChatGPT to help me sentence by sentence at times, Wikipedia, and the ungodly profusion of podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos,…
by Chris Tharp
June 4, 2026
Military life has long served as reliable fodder for American literature, which should come as no surprise: something about stories of men from all corners of the country facing danger as a team is inherently dramatic. From Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, authors have mined the ups and…
June 2, 2026
One of the most irritating things we learn in Ted Geltner’s new biography of Denis Johnson, Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures, is just how easy it all was for Denis. Not that Denis’ life was easy — anyone who’s picked up Jesus’ Son is at least dimly aware that DJ blasted away his 20s careening between dope and booze before…
by Atticus Lish
May 30, 2026
When I was a kid, writing and drawing were joined in my imagination as a single magical scribe-like activity. I got one half of the two-part equation from each of my parents. My father was an editor and writer and my mother was a commercial artist. In the beginning, drawing was dominant because it came…
by Caio Major
May 29, 2026
Two short story collections by trans men were released in 2025, CRAWL by Max Delsohn and Realistic Fiction by Anton Solomonik. (A disclosure: Max Delsohn is a friend of mine.) Both collections are humorous, and both collections feature a lot of pink on their covers. I’m fond of these color schemes, as if together these covers wink at their…
by Sam Jennings
May 26, 2026
Obsession is a nifty little horror movie. Genuinely disturbing, and exhausting, it seems destined to become a midnight movie classic, if we still have that kind of thing anymore. That the film was made for a pittance (less than $1 million) and has just become the least expensive movie since 2009’s Paranormal Activity to top the box office…
by Bart Edelman
May 24, 2026
Tried controlling my life— / One poem at a time— / And it seemed to work. / But then a random stanza / Came to me in distress. / Said for sanity’s sake / It needed more blank space— / Something about conformity, / And that was that. / Soon I found trouble / Everywhere…
May 22, 2026
Last year, while at a literary magazine party at a big Greek restaurant in New York City’s Financial District, I saw Alex Karpovsky mingling in the crowd near the bar. I walked over and let him know that I’ve watched Girls, start to finish, about eight times. He said something like, “Wow, that must be a…
May 20, 2026
Adjectives cling to Ben Lerner like cockleburs. He is “subtle and sinuous,” per James Wood in the New Yorker. His work is “virtuosic,” in the words of Tao Lin for The Believer. The MacArthur Foundation bestowed a fellowship upon him. Of or pertaining to the intellect — these are the descriptors that pile before his feet. It…