October 2016

The earliest instance of a ghost in European literature, according to Bruce, is Elpenor. If you don’t remember Elpenor, you’re hardly alone. His own shipmates couldn’t remember him either.

The fairy tale, that one single act of decision at the ballot box—supposedly someday in November—maybe the 8th or 28th has bearing or meaning, is coming to an end for many believers.

Just as San Francisco was named after an Italian saint and New Orleans after a French king’s brother, the Duc d’Orléans, so New York, city and state, were named after King Charles II’s brother, the Duke of York.

British writer and actor, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, writes and stars in television series Fleabag. Waller-Bridge's character is unnamed throughout the episodes, though the viewer is meant to directly conjure the this soul-infested heroine.

A star sends its light through space, and this passes through the strong gravitational field of the sun. The field bends the light, so the position of the star changes.

I used to joke that between apparel, toys, books and DVDs, my family was, for a time, single-handedly funding Sesame Workshop, the non-profit that produces Sesame Street.

In the week leading up to Friday, September 2, 2016, I accompanied my father in his transition to death. I came back and he did not. I am not yet old, and was only there to help him across.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the term bureaucracy entered the world by way of French literature. The neologism was originally forged as a nonsense term to describe what its creator, political economist Vincent de Gournay, considered the ridiculous possibility of “rule by office,” or, more literally, “rule by a desk.”...

If Tim Lawrence had wanted his third book, “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983,” to go pop, he would have titled it “The World That Made Madonna,” picked a different cover, and added a chapter or two focusing on her.