Art and Culture - Quillette

Scandalous Monogamy and Faithful Infidelity

On eros and marriage.

Marilyn Simon

14 Feb 2025 · 12 min read

Peanuts in Perspective

Peanuts offered parables of existential angst and longing, described through small stories about the small affairs of small people.

George Case

13 Feb 2025 · 7 min read

Mark Addy as Robert I Baratheon, seated on the Iron Throne.

The Great Unfinished Generational Epic

George R.R. Martin, the Strauss-Howe theory of history, and the failure of the Baby Boomers.

Jason Garshfield

10 Feb 2025 · 26 min read

A middle-aged man on stage in blackface, wearing a suit. Black and white image.

Mammy Dearest

Richard Bernstein’s new book about Al Jolson and ‘The Jazz Singer’ offers a thoughtful reconsideration of an unfairly reviled cultural landmark.

Graham Daseler

6 Feb 2025 · 14 min read

Adrien Brody as architect László Tóth is looking down at the camera, smoking, surrounded by sparks.

Architecture as Revenge

Brady Corbet’s panoramic epic, ‘The Brutalist,’ may be technically brilliant, but it is a cheat and a fraud.

Charlotte Allen

3 Feb 2025 · 15 min read

Closeup of isolated vinyl record Highway to Hell album of rock band AC/DC released 1979.

The Thunder from Down Under

If Bach was the sound of God whistling while he worked, AC/DC was the sound of God ordering another round in a strip club on Saturday night.

George Case

25 Jan 2025 · 9 min read

A still from a black-and-white film, featuring a man and woman in formal dress.

American Surrealist

A tribute to David Lynch (1946–2025).

Benjamin Kerstein

21 Jan 2025 · 7 min read

Jodi is a middle aged white woman who is smiling as she talks about her book. She has curly hair.

Shakespeare Versus the Girlboss

Jodi Picoult’s latest novel is a ham-fisted expression of cultural rage, embodying the most anodyne values of corporate human-resources departments.

Marilyn Simon

16 Jan 2025 · 14 min read

A portrait of a beautiful young Chinese actress with a fringe.

A Perfectly Charming Chinese Girl

Against long odds and in the face of exclusionary casting, Anna May Wong bequeathed us an extraordinary cinematic legacy.

Thomas Doherty

9 Jan 2025 · 11 min read

The photo shows a young Dylan in stetson and cowboy outfit in a saloon.

Unmasked and Anonymous

A brief history of Bob Dylan on screen.

Benjamin Kerstein

1 Jan 2025 · 18 min read

Ghosts of Electricity

The magisterial incomprehensibility of Bob Dylan’s ‘Visions of Johanna.’

Thomas Larson

30 Dec 2024 · 8 min read

Timothee Chalamet is a white man in his 20s, at a microphone, wearing dark glasses, with curly brown ha

Printing the Legend

The naysayers are dead wrong about James Mangold’s remarkable new film about Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s.

Ronald Radosh

26 Dec 2024 · 15 min read

Luigi Mangione is a man in his twenties with dark hair. He wears an orange jumpsuit and bears his teeth in a grimace.

Moral Permission to Murder

Dostoevsky and the assassination of Brian Thompson.

Julia Friedman / David Hawkes

23 Dec 2024 · 6 min read

A cartoon black cat with big eyes on what looks like a gondola in Venice.

The Eerie Beauty of ‘Flow’

Gints Zilbalodis’s beautiful dystopian story feels like the start of a new era in cinema, or at least the invitation to one.

Roy Wayne Meredith III

4 Dec 2024 · 5 min read

An actor in Roman costume with a gold crown. He is a man in his 50s, blonde hair, blue eyes wearing purple and gold.

Savage Entertainment

A new version of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione’s notorious 1979 film ‘Caligula’ provides a valuable record of one of the most fascinating disasters in cinema history.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai

14 Nov 2024 · 30 min read