November 24, 2022
Origin Stories
April 16, 2020
The Many Faces of Ferrante
This is a rerun, prompted by the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, based on the “Neapolitan Novels” of Elena Ferrante. Ferrante’s identity remains beguilingly unknown,...| More
May 23, 2019
At Home in Japan with Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer once described himself as “a global village on two legs.” He’s the writing champion of cosmopolitan consciousness who lived awhile inside the Los...| More
October 3, 2017
Karl Ove Knausgaard on Art and Loneliness
Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote a 6-volume selfie that a lot of us can’t stop reading. My Struggle he called it, looking inward and talking to...| More
September 20, 2017
Claire Messud: Best Friends…For Now
Claire Messud is a novelist of social nuance, especially concerning the crushable inner lives of girls. You could say her new book The Burning Girl, is...| More
August 31, 2017
Amiri Baraka: Ennobled by Coltrane
Amiri Baraka‘s death prompts me to repost a conversation we had about the music of John Coltrane, which inspired Baraka and ennobled the ambitions of...| More
May 3, 2017
Ian Johnson and the Souls of China
Ian Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize covering China for the Wall Street Journal–mostly economics–but then discovered what felt like a bigger story: a full-blown spiritual...| More
February 28, 2017
George Saunders in the Afterlife
The story master George Saunders is widely revered as the nicest guy in the writing game, but it’s sweeter and deeper than that. I met him...| More
February 7, 2017
Stephen Kinzer: America’s Empire State of Mind
Why are we everywhere in the world, so often with guns drawn? The provocative reporter Stephen Kinzer has covered a number of our “regime-change” interventions...| More
August 30, 2016
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
In the time of Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston, the poet Claudia Rankine has been the lyric teller of our deepest hurt. Her new book, Citizen: An American...| More
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