Forum Archives

In Praise of Boredom

The world into which I was born no longer exists, of course. I’ve been around for almost half a century, so it was inevitable. My parents — one French, raised…

Curling Parents and Little Emperors

by Pamela Druckerman,

Soon after my book Bringing Up Bébé appeared, in 2012, I discovered an animated video made by a company in Taiwan. In it, a woman who’s supposed to be me…

Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers

by Rivka Galchen,

Flannery O’Connor: No children. Eudora Welty: No children. One children’s book. Katherine Anne Porter: No children, many miscarriages. Hilary Mantel, Janet Frame, Willa Cather, Jane Bowles, Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Bishop,…

The Grand Shattering

by Sarah Manguso,

I never wanted to be a mother. I wanted to be a person. My identity crisis began at age three, when I wanted to be Popeye but realized that I…

How to Be a Parent

by A. Balkan, Sarah Manguso, Rivka Galchen, Pamela Druckerman, Michelle Tea, Emma Donoghue, Ben Lerner, Ellen Rosenbush, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Claire Messud,

These are tough times for parents. Not because child rearing has gotten any harder — it’s the same as it ever was — but because we are newly overrich in hand-wringing books…

Beeper World

by Karen Russell,

The jellyfish life cycle, we were taught in school, involves a sessile state and a period of radiant flight. As polyps, jellyfish are rooted to the seafloor by fleshy stalks.…

Growing Up

by Joshua Cohen, Christine Smallwood, Karen Russell, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Amie Barrodale, Suketu Mehta, Wells Tower,

Five coming-of-age stories

At First Blush

by Karl Ove Knausgaard,

It must have been sometime in the early fall, I was thirteen and had just moved to a new school. It must have been during science class, because I remember…

My Mother’s Apartment

by Amie Barrodale,

I took a class in ad writing at Pratt Institute when I was twenty-four. I lasted one day. One of my classmates came in on the first day with storyboards…

Nina

by Suketu Mehta,

I met her in a computer course my sophomore year at NYU, in 1981. It was the first day of class, and we were learning how to connect the terminals…

Hammer Island

by Wells Tower,

Over the Fourth of July holiday in 1985, when I was seventeen years old, the film producer Morris Walls took me to Hammer Island. This is an island shaped like…

Israel and Palestine

by Bernard Avishai, Dani Dayan, Forsan Hussein, Eva Illouz, Bassim Khoury, Erel Margalit, Danny Rubinstein, Khalil Shikaki,

Where to go from here

How Germany Reconquered Europe

by James K. Galbraith, Ulrike Guérot, John Gray, Christiane Lemke, Jeff Madrick, Emmanuel Todd,

The euro and its discontents

Gaboxadol

by Hamilton Morris,

In 1755 the naturalist Stepan Krasheninnikov observed the Amanita muscaria mushroom’s effects on Russian soldiers in Siberia ingesting it for the first time. Claiming to have been seized by an…

Restlessness

by Heidi Julavits,

I am a sleep hunter. I track sleep through my house. I track it with a flashlight, and a bottle of pills, and two pillows, and a blanket, and a…

Segmented Sleep

by A. Roger Ekirch,

At first I dreaded having to investigate the history of sleep. Human slumber appeared impervious to time and place, stubbornly immune to the element of change animating most works of…

Neighbors

by Deb Olin Unferth,

Maximilian in the basement watched TV every night. I lay on a mattress on the floor in the apartment above him. He’d turn on the news around ten, fall asleep,…

Bed-wetting

by Christine Smallwood,

Whereas child bed wetters in sixteenth-century England had been directed for their malady to consume the testicles of a hedgehog or the windpipe of a cock, Enlightenment science, which rejected…

Herbal Remedies

by Rebecca Curtis,

As a holistic nutritionist, I often work with people who have trouble sleeping. Some wake throughout the night; others jolt up at two a.m. and are unable to return to…

Insomnia

by Rebecca Solnit,

If only sleep could be hoarded, accumulated, and traded; if only you could store it up for a rainy day or borrow it from friends or buy it on the…

Motherhood

by Sarah Manguso,

In the beginning, waiting for the baby to feed or stop feeding or burp or pass wind or yellow liquid shit, I postponed showers, phone calls, bowel movements. With the…

Sleeping Together

by Gideon Lewis-Kraus,

She bowed and introduced herself as Yukiko and I knew it was her real name. I’d heard about the games played by the women in Tokyo’s hostess bars, that they…

Are You Sleeping?

by Rebecca Curtis, A. Roger Ekirch, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Sarah Manguso, Hamilton Morris, Christine Smallwood, Rebecca Solnit, Deb Olin Unferth,

In search of a good night’s rest

King James, Revised

by John Banville, Charles Baxter, Dan Chiasson, Paul Guest, Benjamin Hale, Howard Jacobson, Marilynne Robinson,

History’s best seller turns 400

American Coup d’etat

by Andrew J. Bacevich, Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., Richard H. Kohn, Edward Luttwak,Edited by Bill Wasik,

Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable

Big Brother at the OK Corral

by Wyatt Earp, Ike Clanton,Edited by Jack Hitt,

A frontier fable of gun control and federal justice

Who Needs Men?

by Barbara Ehrenreich, Lionel Tiger,Edited by Colin Harrison,

Addressing the prospect of a matrilinear millennium

A Revolution, or Business as Usual?

by David Frum, Frank I. Luntz, James P. Pinkerton,Edited by Paul Tough,

The New Auteurs

by Mark Gill, Jeffrey Godsick, Bob Israel, Joe Nimziki,Edited by Paul Tough,

How Hollywood publicists and ad execs get a turkey to fly

Untitled

by Jessica Mitford,

You are twenty-one—exactly the same age I was when I had my one and only abortion, in London in 1938. This was way before anyone talked about the “right” to…

Forum

Roundtable discussions of contemporary issues by the academics, writers, and thinkers who know them best.

In Praise of Boredom

Curling Parents and Little Emperors

Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers

The Grand Shattering

How to Be a Parent

Beeper World

Growing Up

At First Blush

My Mother’s Apartment

Nina

Hammer Island

Israel and Palestine

How Germany Reconquered Europe

Gaboxadol

Restlessness

Segmented Sleep

Neighbors

Bed-wetting

Herbal Remedies

Insomnia

Motherhood

Sleeping Together

Are You Sleeping?

King James, Revised

American Coup d’etat

Big Brother at the OK Corral

Who Needs Men?

A Revolution, or Business as Usual?

The New Auteurs

Untitled

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Forum

Roundtable discussions of contemporary issues by the academics, writers, and thinkers who know them best.

From the Archive

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In Praise of Boredom

Curling Parents and Little Emperors

Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers

The Grand Shattering

How to Be a Parent

Beeper World

Growing Up

At First Blush

My Mother’s Apartment

Nina

Hammer Island

Israel and Palestine

How Germany Reconquered Europe

Gaboxadol

Restlessness

Segmented Sleep

Neighbors

Bed-wetting

Herbal Remedies

Insomnia

Motherhood

Sleeping Together

Are You Sleeping?

King James, Revised

American Coup d’etat

Big Brother at the OK Corral

Who Needs Men?

A Revolution, or Business as Usual?

The New Auteurs

Untitled

August 2015

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