How the Poet James Schuyler Wrung Sense from Sensibility
The American poet James Schuyler composed his first significant poem during a nine-week stay at the Payne Whitney Westchester psychiatric clinic, in White Plains, New York, in late 1951.…
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Sterling K. Brown’s Upstanding Archetype
There’s a certain face that only Sterling K. Brown can make. It is yoked to no particular emotional state, and emerges just as often when the actor is conveying deep glee or charming irony…
The Ambitious Film Deconstructions of Stan Douglas
The enterprising Tiler Peck has been a leading dancer at New York City Ballet for more than fifteen years, played a neurotic ballerina on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s “Étoile,” and created a…
Was the Renaissance Real?
Roeck goes on to address the great question of why Europe became the center of prosperity and innovation on the planet. Colonialism and imperialism can’t explain it; they’re as old as…
L.A.’s Food Culture, Transformed by Immigration Raids
In early July, while shopping at a farmers’ market on the east side of Los Angeles, where I live, I bought a few packages of raw chicken thighs from Jose David Ruelas, of Garcia Ruelas…
What We Miss When We Talk About the Racial Wealth Gap
His reluctance to treat family structure as a causal factor is similarly puzzling. He notes that married Black households have an average wealth of two hundred and thirty thousand…
Summer Is the Time for Off Broadway Comedy
When the political activist, comedian, and performance artist Morgan Bassichis premièred their exquisitely funny show “Can I Be Frank?” in New York last summer, they were already picturing…
Williams in Williamstown
On the last day of the first weekend of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, a brief storm struck. We had gone into the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, on Williams College’s campus, for a…
The First Time America Went Beard Crazy
A stroll through the Presidential-portrait wing at the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C., is, among other things, a game of Now You See It, Now You Don’t. In the beginning,…
The Sleazy, Unsettling Sounds of Mk.gee
Earlier this summer, the singer and guitarist Mk.gee played two sold-out shows at the Stone Pony, a rock club just off the boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The venue, which opened in…
The Trophy Abs and Soul Ties of “Love Island USA”
One good way to enjoy the latest season of “Love Island USA”—the seventh, in which new episodes aired on Peacock almost every day for six weeks and just wrapped up—is to imagine that you…
“Eddington” Is a Lethally Self-Satisfied COVID Satire
“Eddington” is a slog, but a slog with ambitions—and its director and screenwriter, Ari Aster, is savvy enough to cultivate an air of mystery about what those ambitions are. His earlier…
The Sophisticated Kitsch of Blackpink
The London-based Nigerian singer Obongjayar has been steadily drifting toward his distinct sound. Initially discovered by XL Recordings head Richard Russell for a freestyle over the…
What Will Become of the C.I.A.?
In December, 1988, as the Soviet Union was beginning to come apart, Senator Bill Bradley, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, convened a closed-door hearing with…
Ryan Davis’s Junk-Drawer Heart
On Easter Sunday, the Louisville-based singer-songwriter Ryan Davis opened a matinée show for Bill Callahan in the assembly room of a former Catholic school in Kingston, New York. Indoor…
A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem
There’s real reason for caution here, starting with the idea that interactions with A.I. can be treated as genuine relationships. Oliver Burkeman exasperatedly writes that, unless you…
A Memoir of Working-Class Britain Wrings Playfulness from Pain
The escape from working-class life has good narrative pedigree, a classic form—beginning with the idea of escape itself. It’s something like a sharpened bildungsroman. The child is nudged…
Conor McPherson’s Reliable Treasure
Conor McPherson’s small 1997 masterwork “The Weir” has been one of the most reliable treasures of the Irish Repertory Theatre. First directed by Ciarán O’Reilly in 2013, revived in 2015,…
“Too Much” Remixes the Rom-Com
Starting over in New York is a cliché for a reason; so is starting over by leaving it behind. Lena Dunham, who became the poster child for a certain kind of Brooklyn millennial during the…
The Simplistic Moral Lessons of “Superman”
The world may be going to hell, but the writer and director James Gunn has graced it with a sunshine “Superman.” The most recent installments in the franchise—Zack Snyder’s diptych “Man of…
Men’s Journal to Return to Print With Summer Issue
Men’s Journal is returning to the print world. After a hiatus of two-and-a-half years, the men’s lifestyle magazine will publish a 100-page issue that will hit newsstands on Friday. Men’s…
Far-Flung Local Gems
In the spirit of summer travel, we’ve asked some of our writers living outside New York City to share a few of their favorite local spots. Read Lauren Collins on an irresistible Parisian…
The Met’s Luminous New Rockefeller Wing Still Casts Some Shadows
It may be the most impressive of the recently modernized colonial collections, far surpassing Berlin’s much criticized Humboldt Forum. One laudable shift is the variety of media…
Finding a Family of Boys
In 1981, I was a student of art history at Columbia University. I was twenty-one and worked to support myself at a variety of jobs. Columbia was an all-boys school then. Old oak desks and…