How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood
With the Enlightenment, monsters were brought under the lamp of reason. The Hydra, the unicorn, mermaids—careful observers exposed them as hoaxes or misidentified species. The French…
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Mo Amer Has Survived by Being Funny
During our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, Amer talked about his reasons for accepting the gig in Saudi Arabia, his friendships with Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel, and…
On My Last Leg
“Really?” I say, somehow shocked by the assertion. “There are so many assholes out there,” E. insists. “But he wants to take care of you.” Later, I repeat the “assholes” line to my…
Emma Stone’s Apocalyptic Showdown Blooms in “Bugonia”
Teddy’s reasoning is a confusion of save-the-world alarmism, garden-variety derangement, unhealed trauma, and single-minded revenge. He’s a beekeeper, and he blames Auxolith’s pesticides…
Richard Move Channels Martha Graham
The New York City shopping scene is nothing if not cyclical; trends have a sneaky way of slinking back, even after being declared dead for decades. For example, the city is currently…
The Muscular Compassion of “Paper Girl”
In her new book, Beth Macy returns to her home town of Urbana, Ohio, using it as a ground zero for understanding right-wing radicalization. Source link
TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software
The so-called desktop first appeared on a home computer in 1981, with the release of the Xerox 8010 Star Information System. That device pioneered the graphical-user interface, or G.U.I.,…
Should We Look on New Technologies with Awe and Dread?
The inevitable progress of technology, in other words, makes the technological sublime elusive. And it’s also true that technologies tend to shrink themselves, taking on unassuming guises.…
The Towering Musical Integrity of Christoph von Dohnányi
In September, 1943, a thirteen-year-old German boy named Christoph von Dohnányi wrote an innocuous-seeming letter to his uncle Dietrich: Uncle Klaus is planning to come tomorrow.…
In the Dark Releases “Blood Relatives,” an Examination of a Notorious British Crime
On an August night in 1985, five members of one family were shot dead at Whitehouse Farm, a country manor in the rural county of Essex, in southeastern England. The police were alerted by…
Christoph Niemann’s “Market Shift”
For the cover of the October 27, 2025, Money Issue, the artist Christoph Niemann set out to visualize how the preposterously rich pay a disproportionately small share of taxes. In…
How Corporate Feminism Went from “Love Me” to “Buy Me”
In retrospect, the book feels like an artifact of a fleetingly optimistic moment, and of a time when the mainstreaming of feminism—recall Beyoncé performing in front of a screen flashing…
Gospel Uplifts “Oratorio for Living Things” and “Oh Happy Day!”
So why did “Oratorio” ultimately leave me feeling wistful? Repetition, Christian tells us, is the agent of both measurement and meaning, and during “Oratorio” I found myself fixating on…
Peruvian-Chinese Cuisine with Impeccable Vibes
The food, too, does some artful recontextualizing. Kam lu wantan, for instance, is a classic chifa dish of deep-fried wontons that are tossed in a sweet-and-sour sauce with meat and…
A Bona-Fide Disco Album That Feels Urgently of the Moment
Many of the paired dances of the twentieth century—the foxtrot, the waltz, the Lindy Hop—reflected the binary gender dynamics of the day: men led and women followed, on the dance floor as…
The Lessons of “The Perfect Neighbor”
“The Perfect Neighbor” chronicles how Lorincz, in her attempts to turn law enforcement against members of her own community, managed only to unite the two groups in shared disgust. (I…
Tame Impala Is an Obsessive, Not a Perfectionist
The magic of Parker’s music—what makes his records so restless, dithery, dynamic—hinges on the minuscule yet crucial difference between perfectionism (endlessly boring) and obsession…
Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda” Shoots Straight
Wresting “Hedda Gabler” from its theatrical confines, DaCosta effects a major structural transformation with graceful ingenuity: the party, which constitutes the entire field of action, is…
Peter Matthiessen Travelled the World, Trying to Escape Himself
But it wasn’t until he arrived in Paris, during his junior year abroad, that he could truly nurture his bohemian streak. The city was still reeling from the Second World War. The power…
V. R. Lang, a Forgotten Queen Bee of Modern Poetry
Candidly. The past, the sensations of the past. Now! in cuneiform, of umbrella satrap square-carts with hotdogs and onions of red syrup blended, of sand bejewelling the prepuce in tank…
Tim Curry Does the Time Warp
It does feel kind of like a play. Even people who haven’t seen it know Madeline Kahn’s “flames on the side of my face” speech. What was your experience with her? I loved her. We got on…
How French Should a Restaurant Be?
The onslaught of intensity works, thanks to choices the restaurant makes in portioning (not overlarge) and service (not over-rushed), which gives the palate a bit of time to regroup…
The Making of “Adaptation”
I didn’t keep close track of what was going on with “Adaptation,” because I was busy with my own work and, frankly, I didn’t expect much to come of it besides the usual Hollywood noise. I…