On Kafka

Read more

From Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write, a collection of essays, which will be published next month by W. W. Norton. We live in an era…

Read more

What the hidden relationships of ancient folktales reveal about their evolution—and our own

Read more

I have recently developed a crank theory, for which I can adduce no real evidence, that the human sense of time has its origins in story, or is at least…

Read more

The rhythms of listening

Read more

By Carol Ruth Silver, from a July 3, 1961, entry in a secret journal of her experiences at the maximum-security Mississippi State Penitentiary, in Parchman. One month earlier, the twenty-two-year-old…

Read more

Mike Paterniti on the power of cheese, the pleasures of digression, and the War of the Roses method of book writing

Read more

Read more

Thrusting from the head of Picasso’s goat are bicycle handlebars. They don’t represent anything, but they are goat’s horns, as night is a black bat, metaphorically. Come into the garden…

Read more