Books & the Arts

A Portrait of Cis-Trans Solidarity

A Portrait of Cis-Trans Solidarity A Portrait of Cis-Trans Solidarity

Torrey Peters’s novel Detransition, Baby reimagines what we call the family.

May 20, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Sophie Lewis

Masaomi Yasunaga’s Fused Pots

Encounters With the Unknown Encounters With the Unknown

Returning to New York’s galleries in search of surprise.

May 19, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

Why Critics Need to Let Their Guard Down

Why Critics Need to Let Their Guard Down Why Critics Need to Let Their Guard Down

A conversation with Larissa Pham about desire, the politics of vulnerability, and practicing a more generous form of criticism.

May 19, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Chalay Chalermkraivuth

Richard Wagner.

Richard Wagner’s Pandemonium Richard Wagner’s Pandemonium

The contested life and afterlife of the composer.

May 18, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Mina Tavakoli

Why Do We Eat Bad Food?

Why Do We Eat Bad Food? Why Do We Eat Bad Food?

Mark Bittman’s new history looks at the economy and politics of junk food.

May 18, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Bill McKibben

St. Louis

The City That Embodies the United States’ Contradictions The City That Embodies the United States’ Contradictions

In the history of St. Louis, we find both a radical and reactionary past—and a more hopeful future too.

May 17, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Robert Greene II

Service Center by Mark McMahon

The Mundane and Alienated Life of a Freelancer The Mundane and Alienated Life of a Freelancer

Kavita Bedford’s novel Friends and Dark Shapes explores the false promises and precarity of writing in the age of the gig economy.

May 13, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Lily Meyer

Mike Gold, Avant-Garde Bard of Proletarian New York

Mike Gold, Avant-Garde Bard of Proletarian New York Mike Gold, Avant-Garde Bard of Proletarian New York

A new biography charts Gold's many lives—as a novelist and journalist, as a working-class militant, and as a forerunner to the Beats.

May 12, 2021 / Books & the Arts / J. Hoberman

Arnold Böcklin

Diane Seuss’s American Gothic Diane Seuss’s American Gothic

frank: sonnets is an oracular collection of verse on mortality, tragedy, love, and life.

May 11, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Lauren Stroh

Tove Ditlevsen

The Brutal Transcendence of Tove Ditlevsen The Brutal Transcendence of Tove Ditlevsen

By resisting all of memoir’s conventions, the Danish writer tells the story of her life more painfully and beautifully.

May 6, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Marie Solis

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