Words Are the Only Victors Salman Rushdie’s new novel is a powerful reminder of his vital role in the endless battle for free speech. Christian Kriticos 28 Feb 2023 · 11 min read
Roald Dahl and the Ethics of Art The urge to censor is based on a misunderstanding of what makes literature valuable. Iona Italia 21 Feb 2023 · 11 min read
Ken Kesey and the Rush to Deinstitutionalization Whatever the literary strengths of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the book has done much to harm both the mentally ill and their communities. Stephen Eide 14 Nov 2022 · 11 min read
Two Hundred Years of Stendhal 2022 marks the bicentennial of the pseudonym’s transformation from literary dabbler into one of the greatest novelists of the modern age. Robert Zaretsky 5 Oct 2022 · 10 min read
Why I Left Academia (Since You're Wondering) I didn’t have a choice. Thousands of people are driven out of the profession each year. William Deresiewicz 17 Aug 2022 · 15 min read
What Explains Women's Fascination With BDSM Fiction? Every generation or so (i.e., roughly every 25 years) a woman (it’s always a woman) writes a book about kinky sex—and a very specific type of kinky sex. Robert King 9 May 2022 · 10 min read
At 400, Molière Still Matters Over the years, Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur has been one my favorite Molière plays to study and direct with my undergraduate students at Princeton University. I find it to be the best point of origin from which to discover his body of work. As often with Molière, the plot Florent Masse 19 Apr 2022 · 11 min read
Anatomy of a Murder On New Year’s Eve 2021 news of my killing began to circulate on Twitter. > holy shit this is a murder https://t.co/CwsF0sZ9sZ — Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) January 1, 2022 [https://twitter.com/juliacarriew/status/1477358519498199043?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] I scrolled through scores of posts before Jonathan Gottschall 18 Mar 2022 · 10 min read
A World of Waste, Stripped of Transcendence: James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at 100 Few novels become institutions, to have departments rigged up around them, whole constituencies and spheres of scholarship, as works of lifelong study, fascination and confusion. Ulysses [https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Modern-Library-Best-Novels/dp/0679600116/ref=sr_1_4?crid=NG7V10N9NCDB&keywords=ulysses&qid=1643218547&sprefix=ulysses%2Caps%2C75& Jared Marcel Pollen 31 Jan 2022 · 13 min read
Reading James Joyce Amidst Winter Snow, ‘Where Dwell the Vast Hosts of the Dead’ Many people no doubt roll their eyes in scoffing dismissal when they hear the commonly expressed—and almost as commonly crooned—wish for a White Christmas. But there are sound spiritual reasons for longing to see one’s environs blanketed with snow. Silent in its approach and accumulation, snow can Herman Goodden 14 Jan 2022 · 9 min read
The Eyes Have It For the “new intellectual,” ultimately, the way forward has to be paved with nuance and understanding. David Cohen 10 Dec 2021 · 10 min read
Mrs. Dalloway: Secularism and Its Enchantments Woolf’s depiction of these inner rhythms would be refined in the novels that followed—To the Lighthouse and The Waves—but Dalloway was the true birth of this form. Jared Marcel Pollen 2 Sep 2021 · 12 min read
There's (a Lot) More to George Orwell than Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell represents one of those strange cases where a writer’s reputation predominantly rests, if not on his worst, then certainly his least typical book. Herman Goodden 27 Aug 2021 · 9 min read