A Political and Literary Forum
Dennis Cooper became famous in the 1980s for his transgressive fiction about marginalized men. A new biography makes a case for what his works can offer readers now, in our era of deep suffering and infuriating indifference.
David B. Hobbs
The French Algerian writer steadfastly defended democracy and humanity against dogmatic ideologies of all stripes. We need to read and reread him today.
Mugambi Jouet
In ‘Be Holding,’ celebrated poet Ross Gay interweaves the legacy of one of basketball’s greatest moments with a meditation on Black resilience.
Eric Morales-Franceschini
Among the most innovative poets of European modernism, he forged a new path for poetry after the terrors of the twentieth century.
Peter E. Gordon
Ron Howard’s Netflix adaptation of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ continues a long tradition of seeing hillbillies as a symbol of pristine American whiteness. It’s the same nostalgia Trump has mobilized on the far right.
Ellen Wayland-Smith
Lucia Moholy helped create the visual language of the Bauhaus, but when she fled the Nazis her work was stolen by Walter Gropius.
Elizabeth Hoover
In ‘Vineland’, his underappreciated 1990 novel, the author of ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ anticipated a United States in which security would become the greatest good.
Peter Coviello
Rereleased this year in a single volume, Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy Three Californias imagines three possible futures for the world writ large through the lens of Orange County, California.
Dayton Martindale
Michel Houellebecq’s Islamophobia and chauvinism have made him a favorite intellectual of right extremists. So why does he appeal to so many on the left as well?
Martin Gelin
In films such as Contagion, virology is often confused with the invisible workings of capital.
Mark Bould
On being awestruck by literature, and the necessary pleasures of intimacy—near and remote—during quarantine.
Alternate histories like Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America—newly adapted by HBO—force us to imagine a different America. Review Essay
Matt Gallagher
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Jacob Whiton
William Callison, Quinn Slobodian
Charisse Burden-Stelly
Colleen Murphy
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