In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7, the subsequent congressional hearings with university presidents, and the encampments that followed, academia has once again found itself at the center of the culture wars, from which it rarely strays far. On one side, critics denounce universities for “wokeness,” while on the other side, defenders…
Act One: Berlin and Prague Immanuelkirchstrasse 29 is a short walk from my house in Berlin. The five-story corner apartment went up in the early years of the twentieth century, when Prenzlauer Berg was a mixed-class district of workers and upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants. Like most buildings in the neighborhood, the façade suffered damage in…
Suddenly a cry flew out of nowhere, like the lash of a whip, piercing and sharp, waking us from a troubled sleep — furious — “Tell me, have you all gone mad? Giving up on all this? Just like that, despairing already, Without a real fight?” “Leave us alone,” we said. “Let us withdraw into…
I saw The Exorcist not long ago, probably the bravest thing I have done in a while. The movie terrified me the first time around in 1973, and it did the same fifty years later. This time it got me thinking about possession. It made me wonder if milder forms of possession — no projectile…
It’s strange, how life can sometimes mimic literature. Consider the story of Jonathan Keeperman, which in crucial ways recalls American Pastoral. Like Philip Roth’s novel, it is a story of how mad ideas can take hold when history unsettles familiar normative coordinates, and when children confront a more dimly lit world than the one faced…
When we first met, you said you hoped to write a place as yet unwritten, maybe here, the last of the café’s lunch crowd clearing out with a soft ceramic clink and spray of light through glass to glaze your dark cascade of hair. It’s not Manhattan, after all: it’s not a place for public…
The last time we ever spoke Missouri suburbs filled with snow and snowfall blotted out the oak beyond your buried patio. You’d never see another spring. Falls . . . confusion . . . vertigo . . . Familiar landmarks vanishing, you stood up from your wheelchair. Where did you think you were going? Across…
Memory care makes final introductions to residents whose names have slipped away at the slightest pressure, evanescent syllables for those who will not be here long, mere bubbles in a froth of foam, more transient than resident, some transitioning, not to another gender, but to another state of being altogether. Are you in the bathtub?…
Reconstituted voices, scraps of cloud caught in branches, the morning campfire of Pu-erh tea or mown hay of white peony, an old man’s blaser hanging on its peg, the human funk of toasted cumin seeds, oak burnt to ashes, cinerulent fox fur, crapy grape leaves in late November, a shirred old pumpkin, the soap and…
Every fall I teach a first-year seminar called “Why College? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.” On the first day of class I present a list of possible purposes for college and ask students to rank them. “Finding your passion” and “changing the world” are always the top vote-getters, because that is the story we tell about…
“In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign.” So said President Donald Trump in his inaugural speech to the United Nations in September 2017. “In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government’s first duty is to its people, to our citizens… As President of the…
I contemplate a bird. In fact it is a photo of a bird, many times larger than life, hanging on the wall of a café. I’ve never had a chance to scrutinize a bird so carefully before. After I finish admiring its beauty, I turn my attention to its claws, which are pointed and hard,…
