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On a black volcanic beach, Christopher Nolan peers into a wheeled contraption that looks like a portable air-conditioner. The IMAX camera,... Read More

This post is most profitably read as an addendum to Naomi Kanakia’s impressively comprehensive report on the influence of the Austrian... Read More

FOR A MOMENT before The Moment -- no, not that one; the other one, the one that started it all -- Sophie Cunningham considers exercising... Read More

On July 16th, I left Washington D.C. and returned to the American interior. It is likely I will only go back to retrieve my furniture from... Read More

Christopher Nolan’s new film is an absolute masterpiece.  Read More

A good New York City summer is filled with music. I sit backstage in the green room, supporting my closest friend as they prepare to go... Read More

Ohioan John Ream is an accomplished aerospace engineer and brewery owner. He would like to try his hand at making Bourbon. However, federal... Read More

Years ago, living in Washington, D.C., I spent much of my time waiting for the San Francisco Giants to come to town. In 2009, the team was... Read More

The “chudosphere” has had a very busy last few days. Ever tasked by Our Lord with his heaviest burdens, one depraved event has... Read More

I spent the spring and summer of 2025 on my phone. It was rarely far from my hand, this time-eating box I used to communicate with my loved... Read More

Ian Marcus Corbin’s new book, To Arrive Where We Started, offers a deep reflection on traditional wisdom, drawing on complexity theory... Read More

– You won’t change the world with what you do,And since this frankness seems to have such charms for you,I tell you, frankly,... Read More

Several months ago I asked Camille Bordas if I could interview her to mark the release of her debut story collection, One Sun Only. It took... Read More

Go slowly. This is goodbye. Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine concludes one of the richest portraits of New York — a suave trilogy... Read More

1991 was the last great season of America's pastime.  Now, before I get trashed on this, hear me out. At the beginning of the last... Read More

The Baffler is the prettiest magazine that I’ve reviewed so far. It is perfect-bound, 130ish pages in length, with matte covers,... Read More

I have been to the Backrooms, and the Backrooms have made me sad. Like every other artist on earth, I can’t keep from reflecting on... Read More

This was 2016. I was living in Portland. I got to know this young guy, Brett. He was a pretty sharp guy. He was active in the local literary... Read More

The Mojave Desert is in Claire Vaye Watkins’s DNA. She was born in Bishop, four hours away from Tecopa, the town in Death Valley where... Read More

Lionel Messi found himself surrounded. Tens of thousands of fans looked down on him at MetLife. Billions were watching around the world. And... Read More

Sir Paul McCartney is the kind of person who long ago ceased to be a human being. His artistic achievement and cultural footprint are so... Read More

Amid the controversy over Christopher Nolan’s odd diversity casting, the director’s biggest change to “The Odyssey”... Read More

Twenty years after her death, there’s still much to say about Muriel Spark. And biographers and critics have queued up to do it:... Read More

ALL LITERARY AGENTS are liars. I am a literary agent. Read More

“How’s about we form a good old-fashioned Warped Tour circle pit?” Cory Castro bellows into the mic, calling the few... Read More

Every afternoon, I drive to my local YMCA and spend an hour jogging in place on an elliptical machine. At that time of day, I am not in the... Read More

Every few months, some magazine or other does some “state of criticism” roundtable where they get, I don’t know, Becca... Read More

A man floats half-dead for days in the middle of the Mediterranean. Eventually he is rescued by a kind stranger and nursed back to health.... Read More

Directed by Jon Erwin and released to commemorate this special Fourth of July, the film Young Washington hits the viewer almost startlingly.... Read More

If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates... Read More

One day at Café Central in Vienna in 1894, Peter Altenberg was reading a story in the newspaper about the disappearance of a... Read More

Christopher Nolan does something extraordinarily nervy in his overwhelming new film, The Odyssey. He has made as faithful a version of... Read More

“Does anyone else associate World Cup summers with this deep sense of relaxation tinged with childhood nostalgia?” Sohrab Ahmari... Read More

Tom Hiddleston is holding court in the center of an ancient city, determined to solve a centuries-old mystery. An epic cataclysm happened... Read More

“The whole field of AI alignment—ensuring that machine intelligence can peacefully coexist with humanity—grew out of the... Read More

Is there any subject that fiction cannot address? From its beginnings as a form, the novel has dealt with love and hate, war and peace,... Read More

PITY THE TRANSLATOR of masterpieces. “We convince by our presence,” Walt Whitman wrote, suggesting that a work of art has to... Read More