May 18, 2026
What do we want from our idols? Devotion to their ideals, of course, a keen sense of self-mythos, preferably an exalted capacity to live as they preach. On a cursory glance, Jack Kerouac appears to meet these standards. The Buddhist Years, a collection of Kerouac’s previously unpublished drafts, diary entries, poems, and scribbles, excavating his...
Read MoreMay 11, 2026
How many great women painters have been honored by history? In 1948, the writer Edward James claimed there were just seven female masters: Artemisia Gentileschi, Rosalba Carriera, Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, Angelica Kaufmann, Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt, and Berthe Morisot. It was a relatively new phenomenon to have a successful woman artist, he wrote, thanks...
Read MoreMay 4, 2026
The Silicon Valley elites funding the New Right believe it is much more difficult to be cynically correct than idealistically wrong. This is central to the worldview of figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen. They believe it is their lot in life to possess superior judgement that enables them to pierce...
Read MoreApril 27, 2026
Juan spoke Spanish into his earpiece, just a murmur of entonces and biens. He had folded Lexus napkins into the pockets behind the front seats so riders could see the Lexus logo. A business card, Juan’s Construction Services, had been taped to the dashboard. I’m not sure whether he used his Uber business to advertise...
Read MoreApril 20, 2026
I: Safaa and a Design from the Heart of Survival In the visual grammar of Safaa, a 24-year-old graphic designer from Gaza, “contrast” is not merely a tool for aesthetic clarity; it is the vital tension between the ash of her reality and the colors of her resilience. Safaa does not introduce herself with a...
Read MoreApril 13, 2026
I Saint Fillan’s left arm glowed in the dark, the better to read Scripture in his cave. He was born in Munster with a stone in his mouth. When his father Feriach, son of Cellach Cualann, King of Leinster saw the stone, he threw young Fillan in a lake. Saved by a passing priest, Fillan...
Read MoreApril 6, 2026
In March of last year, about six weeks after Donald Trump returned to the White House, I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I...
Read MoreMarch 30, 2026
Carol Anshien knew exactly what items she was looking for. It was a spring day in 2024, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and she was rummaging through her apartment. Throughout the years, Anshien had carefully preserved her records, which had resulted in high stacks towering around her home. They spanned over more than...
Read MoreMarch 23, 2026
Wrecked over distances I stake out the cabin in satellites but my geography is rainy. Dear territory: (trembling) carry him over the abyss, promise me tenderness. I tell myself the patchwork quilt stitches souls into its cosmos. He vomited three times, strangling anaphylaxis. I wonder what ocean smells like on wind smashing inland. ...
Read MoreMarch 23, 2026
Sky curls up your arms, sun-beats fall so near. Diderot said the body had corresponding attitudes to sound. Did you hear me catch my breath observing the commotion of your legs sturdy on the floor while hers, uplifted, split, and mythologically you became an hourglass, in his encyclopedia a compound pose....
Read MoreMarch 16, 2026
1 Single Helix Three months into 2026, two scandals roil whatever is now meant by the MAGA coalition. Both begin with mysterious deaths: Charlie Kirk’s and Jeffrey Epstein’s. In the nearly six months since Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University on September 10th a schism has cleaved apart the most online quadrants of MAGA....
Read MoreMarch 9, 2026
Coiled at the center of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a shadowy club committed to the “racial purification” of the American populace. Meeting in luxury hotel suites and bland office towers, these lumpy, balding men — generals, politicians, titans of industry — want to rebalance the composition of their country, and possibly...
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