Harper’s Magazine turns 175 this month, but New Books is only twenty-three—too young to rent a car without incurring an additional fee. It feels older, doesn’t it? Those two imperious…

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Mathias Énard’s interrupted history

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Reading a new translation of Capital

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The corpse flower, when it opens every few years, attracts admirers by the tens of thousands. It is only in bloom for two or three days, and for those days…

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Shulamith Firestone and the burdens of prophecy

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I first encountered Robert Crumb at my local Blockbuster, in the mid-Nineties, when Crumb became available for rental. I wasn’t more than ten at the time, so I didn’t understand…

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Katie Kitamura’s anti-expressive fiction

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The story of 2 Tone

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The beauty of John McGahern’s prose

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Julian the Apostate, by Julien Nguyen © Julien Nguyen. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery Shia LaBeouf and I were born six days apart in June 1986. I see him as the…

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Dino Buzzati’s accidental realism

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On Jean Strouse and the art of biography

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The AARP stands for nothing. In 1999, the group announced that its four-letter initialism, which for more than forty years had denoted the American Association of Retired Persons, would thenceforth…

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On Elden Ring

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Hare (Blue Eyes), by Valerie Hammond © The artist. Courtesy Planthouse, New York City Had I known that Aesop’s fables were so unhinged, I would’ve turned to them long ago.…

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On the Village Voice

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A photograph by Steven Ahlgren from his book The Office, which was published by Hoxton Mini Press © The artist I’ve never visited the office of this magazine. Oh, sure,…

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Fredric Jameson at ninety

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A Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony in Miami, 1922 © Bettmann/Getty Images One of the most jarring things about the Ku Klux Klan is the silliness of their rituals and…

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Seamus Heaney and the end of the poetic career

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Something about poetry—writing it, reading it, writing about reading it—begs to be postponed indefinitely. I don’t mean that I dread it, only that it calls for conditions that never quite…

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The death of the mythical method

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No one can torch the English language like a Beltway insider. A few years ago, phrases like “a feature, not a bug” and “saying the quiet part out loud” burned…

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On Eliot Weinberger

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I’m a father now. Please, hold your applause. As I write this, my son is fifteen days old, and I’m staring into the soft hurricane whorl of his hair, thinking…

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