A Subterranean Celebration
How the 6 Gallery reading in San Francisco on 7 October 1955 changed the counterculture.
David S. Wills
· 13 min read
Books
A collection of 213 posts
Better Than Bobby Fischer
Danny Rensch never became the world’s greatest chess player. But his improbable rise from traumatised cult child to dot-com wunderkind represents an even more impressive achievement.
Jonathan Kay
· 15 min read
Lifting Weights
Jordan Castro’s new novel ‘Muscle Man’ offers a wry and meme-literate vision of blokey intellectualism.
Brad Strotten
· 5 min read
Literary Prozac
Matthew Gasda’s new novel unfolds in a haze of empty dialogue and overwrought introspection.
Brad Strotten
· 7 min read
Heterodox Radical
A new collection of Murray Kempton’s articles reveals a thoughtful journalist whose politics were difficult to categorise.
Ron Capshaw
· 8 min read
Plotting Lives of Quiet Contentment
Modern literature’s tiresome preoccupation with misery and victimhood is neglecting whole swathes of the human experience.
Mallory Young
· 7 min read
Picture Perfect
Vincenzo Latronico’s prismatic novel ‘Perfection’ is a lament for the hopes and dreams of a generation reconfigured by the internet.
Andrew White
· 9 min read
Nicholas II, Aššurbanipal, and Marco Polo Walk into a Bookstore…
Quillette editor Jonathan Kay reviews three newly published history books about the Assyrian Empire, the fall of the Romanovs, and the travels of Marco Polo.
Jonathan Kay
· 16 min read
A Violent History Obscured
South Korean Nobel laureate Han Kang’s literary experimentation thwarts rather than advances her professed concern for the suffering of everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Brad Strotten
· 7 min read
The Great Unfinished Generational Epic
George R.R. Martin, the Strauss-Howe theory of history, and the failure of the Baby Boomers.
Jason Garshfield
· 26 min read
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
· 14 min read
‘Bright Lights, Big City’ at Forty
Jay McInerney’s debut novel was the first work of fiction to explore yuppie culture, and its success changed American publishing.
Kevin Mims
· 16 min read
Reading Nietzsche in Amsterdam
Lale Gül’s autobiographical novel about a young Muslim woman living in the Netherlands has led to death threats and ostracism. But it is a work of admirable intelligence and courage.
Brad Strotten
· 7 min read
Tales of Creation and Adaptation
The journey of two novels from mind to page to silver screen.
Allan Stratton
· 22 min read
Forging Early America’s Northeastern Backbone
In a new book, David Alff traces the origins of the railway line that joined Boston to Washington, D.C., transforming a young nation in the process.
Jonathan Kay
· 18 min read