The Greatest: On the Wonderful Mystery of Janet Malcolm

Looking over my notes for this career-spanning essay on Janet Malcolm, I find many of them less helpful than I hoped, consisting as they do mostly of phrases like “hell yeah,” “absolutely beautiful,” “brilliant writing,” “so so so perfect,” “how does she do it,” and so forth. Practitioners of a certain type of literary nonfiction speak her name in hushed tones and with a sense of holy awe. Katie Roiphe, who has quite consciously positioned herself as Malcolm’s inheritor, called her “the only living writer who terrified me.”

The Engine of Waking Life: On Depression and Teaching

I don’t want to write about teaching high school English. But I need to write about being depressed. And for me those experiences cannot be neatly cleft, like conjoined twins whose shared skin shelters so much blood. I once worked as a kid actor and kept at it until I was 23. I felt burnt out, lost, and useless. I filled my days with reading, using my newfound time to try to brute-force my way through a classical education. Then I read a charming essay by Salvatore Scibona about St. John’s, a small liberal arts college in New Mexico focused on reading and discussing great books.

The Nonfiction Artist: A Photo Essay by Max Vadukul: Never-Before-Seen Portraits of Gay Talese

I shot these portraits of Gay Talese in the spring of 2015 and they’ve been unjustly sitting in my archives ever since. I shot them for a small men’s magazine, but for some reason, they only ended up using two pictures, and I’ve always felt it was criminal these portraits never saw the light of day. I still remember the afternoon that I visited Gay at his Upper East Side townhouse. He was wearing his signature fedora, bespoke Oxford shoes, and a Brioni suit. He’s someone who dresses for his role in the world, like a policeman, a monk, or a judge.

Wouk Backlash: On The Caine Mutiny and the Literature of War

In 1958, a young and fast-rising political scientist named Samuel Huntington was denied tenure at Harvard because of a book he wrote. Huntington had penned it in the wake of the Korean War, just as Americans were, for the first time in their history, reconciling themselves to the idea of a large peacetime army. For past wars, the country had mustered a large army, then all but disbanded it when the fighting ended. But the emergent Cold War seemed to call for a standing reserve of military might. Nervous Americans, ill-practiced at living in the shadow of a garrison army, wondered what to make of it.

You Say You Want a Revolution: On One Battle After Another and Pynchon’s Vineland

There is a buzz in the air. Electricity skitters across telephone wires, rubber sheaths stretched from pole to pole, drooping above rooftops. Signals ping between satellites and television antennas. Microwaves zap frozen dinners. Static has become the incessant white noise in the nation’s collective head. Later that autumn, “Miami Vice” will premiere on NBC, broadcasting a world of pastels, cops, cocaine, and excess onto the Tubes in every household. Brewing over that sweet Northern California summer — like the bulbous belly of a helicopter skimming the crests of evergreens, its blades whirring and shearing the air — is the presidential election.

Nothing is Over: On Rioting in the Contemporary American Novel

For the past 35 years or so, the Black working class and their accomplices have rioted against the police across different cities with increasing regularity. I want to be clear: I am not talking about protest. I am talking about riots, uprisings, and rebellions where property is looted, fires burn, rocks are thrown, and tear gas is deployed. In 2020, by the police’s count, there were riots in dozens of American cities. Occasionally, the contemporary riot will be large groups of black-clad anarchists (many of whom are white, though not all) and other radical activists running wild in the streets. These street battles happened prior to Ferguson too.

AI, Impressionism, and the Fleeting Now: On Gustave Caillebotte and the Art to Come

Who has heard of Gustave Caillebotte? Among my family members who grew up in the Chicago area, his most famous painting — Paris Street; Rainy Day — is widely beloved. This is solely due to its prominent placement in the Art Institute of Chicago, where it marks the entrance of the Impressionist wing. My family has many memories of walking up the white marble stairs to see it atop in all its enormity: seven feet high and nine feet wide. But that’s all they knew about Caillebotte — and that was more than I could say.

The Power of Art in the AI Age: On 21st-Century Painting and the Backlash Against the Thinking Machines

Once upon a time, only artists could take selfies. It took years of effort to earn the ability to transcribe reality. Artists observed figure models to draw people accurately, and the readiest option was their own reflection. A self-portrait was both a tool and a visage recorded for posterity, revealing how the artist saw herself under prolonged observation, expressed through talents that she devoted her life to cultivating. When you look into the eyes of a self-portrait, you see the part of an artist’s soul that she tried to preserve ahead of death. This is why so many artists have posed themselves with memento mori such as human skulls.

The Woes of Slight Autism: On Emmett Rensin’s The Complications and Life on the Spectrum

During my senior year of high school, a friend of mine — let’s call her “Mary” — told me that she liked a guy, “Jack,” in our class. I didn’t think much of it. People have crushes on each other, they catch feelings, sometimes the feelings are mutual, and sometimes they’re not. I shifted the conversation away from her confession toward asking her what grade she got on the biochem test. She claimed that she forgot. Later in the day, I went to tennis practice, where I started making small talk with one of my teammates. He mentioned he just found out that his ex was going out with Jack.

To Go Big or Come Home?: On the Writing Life With Major and Indie Publishers

In late 2022, I found myself at a crossroads. It had been four years since I’d published a book, and although it had been named on multiple “Best of 2018” lists and sold enough to earn (minor) royalties, the publisher had declined a paperback run. My agent and I had amicably parted ways after she’d passed on three consecutive book manuscripts. I’d spent 18 months — and about 120 query emails — trying and failing to find a new agent. I was forced to consider the possibility that the publishing world had seen the best I had to offer and decided they could live without it.

The Prophet and the Barbarians: On Sam Kriss

Sam Kriss, as is well known, lives on top of a mountain in a little hut. It is cold on the mountain. Sometimes, when the sun is shining, he ventures out to the moss-sprung slopes to pick mushrooms, but most of the time he just sits indoors, reading the Tarot, listening to the prophecies blown to him on the icy winds, the curtains of rain. He spends his evenings huddled by the fire, studying the works of the great heresiarchs: Basilides, Swedenborg, Clung. Only occasionally does he venture down into the valleys to meet the toothless hordes, usually when there has been another Taylor Swift concert or another presidential election.

You Will Not Remember This Essay: On “Antimemes” and the Failures of Rationalism

How do you build the perfect defense against cognitive blind spots? More than any other, this is the question that undergirds the highly influential online “rationalist” movement. What sounds like an introductory philosophy exercise has, over the past decade, precipitated deep-pocketed research institutes, financial collapse, at least one abusive cult, at least one other murderous cult, and national political tumult. A currently sold-out science fiction paperback might offer the answer.

In Defense of Laughter: On Dave Barry

At the start of Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up, the longtime humor columnist Dave Barry informs us that he’s writing the book in part because he wants to explain where he gets his ideas. Being a fan of Barry since I surreptitiously read his column collections in middle school language arts class, and as one of his biggest enthusiasts under 50 that you’ll probably ever meet, it’s with considerable affection that I say: Hey Dave, what ideas?

Two Roads for the Literary Critical Elite: An Essay on the State of Criticism Today

The idea that literary criticism is not merely a secondary reflection about literature but an autonomous form of intellectual and aesthetic production has deep roots in Western thought dating back at least to the Enlightenment. Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism,” published in 1711, marks a pivotal moment in this history, treating criticism not only as an evaluative practice but as a public and philosophical engagement with literature. Periodically since then we’ve been told — unsurprisingly, mostly by critics — that we’re living in a “golden age” of criticism.

The Incarnationals: On Christine Rosen, Charles Taylor, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty

“If you have heard God calling you in the depths of your heart, in spite of the tumult of the world, then you are indeed most blessed.” A nun named Irene wrote this sentence to me in a letter two summers ago. I had written to her asking for advice, expressing my deep disturbance at a sense of being called to religious life. “You should have no reason at all to be frightened of the possibility that God might be calling you to serve Him,” she continued. “It is the plan of Satan today to keep people well and truly busy and distracted by spending hours on social media at work and home. So few today spend time in prayer and due to the noise in their heads, they are incapable of hearing the gentle whisper.”