World
What to Read if You Loved “East of Eden”
Of the sixteen novels that John Steinbeck published before his death, in 1968, “East of Eden” was his favorite. “I think everything else I have written has been, in a...
How “Edinburgh” Reimagines Time to Tell a Story of Trauma
But Chee’s first-person, present-tense narration differs from most in being, in a seeming paradox, retrospective. This isn’t exactly an innovation: the modernists experimented with it, and it’s not uncommon in...
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MacKenzie Scott’s Substack Novel Can’t Escape the Amazon Juggernaut
The novel is set in an America partitioned into two factions: the Dakota Membership, presumably made up of North and South Dakota, and Still United, an agglomeration of other states...
Peter de Sève’s “Lapdog”
For the cover of the October 12, 2026, issue, the artist Peter de Sève depicts a scene around Central Park’s reservoir, a cherished spot in a city where access to...
Why Is Illness So Hard to Write About?
Yet the strange disparity Woolf identified persists. We have grown much more willing to put the body on the page without necessarily becoming much better at putting illness there. It...
Arthur Jafa’s Odyssey of Appropriation
A still from “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death” (2016).I was reminded of “2001” in the show’s opening rooms. In Kubrick’s prologue, an ape realizes that a bone...
Trudie’s Tavern Is Equal Parts Sleekness and Schmaltz
If you wanted Trudie’s to be romantic, as the pink and the linens might imply it to be, there’s a romantic restaurant in there for you: a dirty Martini, a...
Why Adults Are Playing with Toys
Eventually, I met a prominent kid-ult. His name is Tristan Wigglesworth, but on YouTube, where he posts videos about his collection of Funko Pops—vinyl figurines of anything and everything in...
Let Cathy Ames Be a Monster
Charles is no stranger to whores, but pure-hearted Adam immediately succumbs to the woman without a past upon whom he can project his own dreams and wishes. Cathy will be...
“The Swan” Gets a Superficial Reckoning
A new documentary about the reality series, which gave participants extreme makeovers before pitting them against one another in a beauty pageant, fails to grapple with the show’s cruelty, or...
