“Boy with June Bug, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1963,” by Gordon Parks © The Gordon Parks Foundation In the season of picnics, hikes, and naps in the shade, Lucy Jones’s impassioned…

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Jon Fosse makes the novel new

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“Woman and Lilies,” by Jo Ann Callis © The artist. Courtesy ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica, California In literature and film, something happens when women hit forty, or nowadays perhaps forty-five: the…

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On Jon Meacham

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Clockwise from top left: “Narrative of Sojourner Truth (title page), 1850, Rubenstein Library, Duke University”; “Watch, Larkin Franklin Sr., Eatonville Historic Preservation”; “The Works of Robert Burns, First Book Purchased…

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A poet’s battle against Russian nationalism

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On a forgotten genius of American music

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Plane Grid, by Kim Frohsin © The artist. Courtesy Andra Norris Gallery, Burlingame, California “I am someone who can live (within reason) anywhere,” writes Aminatta Forna in her new book…

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The new internet novels

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On the secret of Faulkner's literary form

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“Asthand,” by Nina Röder, from Bath in Brilliant Green, which was published in 2018 by Kehrer Verlag © The artist. Courtesy Galerie Burster, Berlin A surprising number of novelists are…

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The history of the black church

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Allan Gurganus’s Southern utopias

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Naître à soi, by Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux © The artist. Courtesy Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Paris In The Year of Living Dangerously, the actress Linda Hunt puts on an unforgettable performance…

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Philip Roth reviews his own biographer

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Mountains in the Snow, by Erich Heckel © akg-images/Artists Rights Society, New York City Philippe Sands’s remarkable 2016 book, East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against…

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A science-fiction pioneer finds posthumous fame

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Helen Frankenthaler’s earthbound genius

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Lovers and Time, by Alex Kanevsky © The artist. Courtesy Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco Danielle McLaughlin’s debut novel, The Art of Falling (Random House, $28), recounts a tumultuous season…

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The languid pleasures of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

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Tove Ditlevsen’s relentless clarity

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“Modena, 1973,” by Luigi Ghirri, from The Map and the Territory, which was published in 2018 by MACK © The artist. Courtesy MACK It has been oddly comforting these past…

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The story of character

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On Alfred Hayes

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Blick auf den Tiergarten mit weißen Kugeln (Parkbild), by Max Beckmann © akg-images When we try to get at a work of art, words of criticism fail worse than anything—they…

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The difficult pleasures of William Gaddis

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On the perils of novelizing one’s life

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A self-portrait by Francisco Goya, 1810 © akg-images/Nimatallah The best-known works of the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya do not give the impression of having been created by a particularly…

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