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The story of 2 Tone

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The beauty of John McGahern’s prose

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Julian the Apostate, by Julien Nguyen © Julien Nguyen. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery Shia LaBeouf and I were born six days apart in June 1986. I see him as the…

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Dino Buzzati’s accidental realism

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On Jean Strouse and the art of biography 

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The AARP stands for nothing. In 1999, the group announced that its four-letter initialism, which for more than forty years had denoted the American Association of Retired Persons, would thenceforth… 

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On Elden Ring

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Hare (Blue Eyes), by Valerie Hammond © The artist. Courtesy Planthouse, New York City Had I known that Aesop’s fables were so unhinged, I would’ve turned to them long ago.…

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On the Village Voice 

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A photograph by Steven Ahlgren from his book The Office, which was published by Hoxton Mini Press © The artist I’ve never visited the office of this magazine. Oh, sure,…

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Fredric Jameson at ninety

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A Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony in Miami, 1922 © Bettmann/Getty Images One of the most jarring things about the Ku Klux Klan is the silliness of their rituals and…

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Seamus Heaney and the end of the poetic career

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Something about poetry—writing it, reading it, writing about reading it—begs to be postponed indefinitely. I don’t mean that I dread it, only that it calls for conditions that never quite…

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The death of the mythical method

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No one can torch the English language like a Beltway insider. A few years ago, phrases like “a feature, not a bug” and “saying the quiet part out loud” burned…

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On Eliot Weinberger 

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I’m a father now. Please, hold your applause. As I write this, my son is fifteen days old, and I’m staring into the soft hurricane whorl of his hair, thinking… 

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On Kafka

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Because I’ve written about government conspiracies, I sometimes hear from crazy people. “Only the intervention of AI can stop Man from creating Hell cybernetically,” one wrote recently. “It would be…

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When Guatemalan adoption became big business

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I was six the first time I recall setting foot in a funeral home, and I remember my confusion at the phrase—a home where none but the dead lived, and…

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Billie Holiday’s changeable shade

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Carrie Sun used to be on the side of Big Money. Her memoir, Private Equity (Penguin Press, $29), describes her disillusioning tenure as an assistant to Boone Prescott, the founder…

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The elusive fiction of Phyllis Paul

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