Primo Levi and the enigma of survival

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The double life of John le Carré

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In the harsh winter of 1895, Tolstoy wrote a story called “Master and Man,” which tells of a merchant named Brekhunov who, on a day that threatens a blizzard, orders…

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At the beginning of Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, the top-secret Impossible Mission Force (I.M.F.) is disbanded after a congressional investigation deems it too reckless. Now Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)…

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Two ways of looking at Percival Everett

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Three centuries of American witch hunts

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I just wanted to tap. But in the mid-Eighties and early Nineties, in the well-to-do suburbs of New Jersey, the price of flapping, winging, and shuffling off to Buffalo was…

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Early on in the movie adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 novel, Beasts of No Nation, Agu, the preteen protagonist, and his unnamed older brother have just pulled off an impish…

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Michel Houellebecq’s immortal longings

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The genius of Joy Williams

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America’s lost culture of opposition 

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In the year since Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature, translations of his works have glutted the shelves. Part of this influx has to do with the general…

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At the climax of Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 homage to World War II genre movies, a German war hero who’s attending the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film based…

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Franzen and the women

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How sneakers became high fashion and big business

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It starts with a mistake; most stories do. Ex-model Luz and her ex-military boyfriend, Ray, are squatting in a dusty mansion in what used to be Laurel Canyon but is…

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In Season 5 of Louie (FX), Louie is a new kind of superhero. Like Wonder Woman, the canonical superhero he most resembles, Louie’s distinctive superpower is love. With loving understanding,… 

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What’s missing in contemporary war fiction

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The ongoing struggle for voting rights

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Before Europe orientalized its eastern colonies, the Jew orientalized himself. Living in exile — amid the empires of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the four Islamic caliphates — he…

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Museums,” the art historian Susanne Neubauer wrote, “are the place where things are transformed into objects.” In the case of BASQUIAT: THE UNKNOWN NOTEBOOKS, which is on view at the…

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The dismal science of human optimization 

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In August 1965, Andy Warhol popped two Desoxyn and set out with his Philips tape recorder to capture a day in the life of Factory superstar Ondine. (The two had…

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In the final seconds of Wolf Hall — the six-part BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s best-selling novels of high-stakes intrigue at the court of Henry VIII — the camera lingers…

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Mark Greif’s intellectual excavations 

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With the arrival of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix), we finally have a major sitcom heroine whom we definitely don’t want to dress like. Kimmy Schmidt…

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You never step in the same river twice, but a rival you step on constantly. “Everything flows” — including anger and resentment. According to Socrates, according to Plato, the original… 

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Karl Taro Greenfeld and the novel of inequality 

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