May 2019

Whitman needed not a mere celebrity endorsement, not just an appreciative aesthete, but a lover in Russia; a passionate, devoted reader who would accept him without judgment.

Amartya Sen is reasonable in saying that Narendra Modi, re-elected as Prime Minister of India last week, has simply won the vote share, but not the battle of ideas.

Trying to get a point across in public writing, whether established or clickbait media, with just the nuance, force, and connotations you intend, is like trying to perform a violin solo underwater...

I’ll begin at the beginning of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) instigated adventure. Today we had to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch our 10-hour flight to Seattle.

The path of Alessandro Agudio’s artistic practice intersects with some of this story: an important moment of institutional recognition for his work was his inclusion in Ennesima...

Since David K. Leff’s first book appeared over a decade ago, he has carved out a position in New England’s literary and environmental history. Some of his books, like Canoeing Maine’s Legendary Allagash, reach back to a Thoreauvian past

We are fast approaching a point where one third of the global population will play video games on a regular basis. As such, video gaming ought to become a serious object of philosophy...

Monday is the first springlike day after a long stretch of drear, and in true mad-dogs-and-Englishmen style massive crowds are out to greet the midday sun. Swaddled in scaffolding, Big Ben is unrecognizable as it towers above the protests below.

On the last night of February 1986, the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and his wife, Lisbet, were strolling home through downtown Stockholm.

Sketch, Léon Cogniet, 1870 by M. Munro No agreement exists as to the possibility of defining negation, as to its logical status, function, and meaning, as to its field of applicability. “The mystery of negation: This is not how things are, and yet we can say how things are...

When the headmaster of Stowe argued that the widening participation measures to raise the proportion of state school students were "social engineering"...

The Literary Club, known simply as “The Club,” was established in early 1764 after the portrait painter Joshua Reynolds became worried about his friend Samuel Johnson...

You test the water with your elbow. You taste the milk before serving it. Is the temperature all right? Tenderness is throwing your body in the ring for someone else, is showing compassion...

by Ed Simon He undertakes to write a Chronicle of things before they are done, which is an irregular, and a perverse way. —John Donne, from a sermon preached at Lincoln’s Inn, 1620 Between 1997 and 1998, representatives of His Majesty’s government stationed in Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Moscow...