May 2019

Whitman needed not a mere celebrity endorsement, not just an appreciative aesthete, but a lover in Russia; a passionate, devoted reader who would accept him without judgment.

Amartya Sen is reasonable in saying that Narendra Modi, re-elected as Prime Minister of India last week, has simply won the vote share, but not the battle of ideas.

Trying to get a point across in public writing, whether established or clickbait media, with just the nuance, force, and connotations you intend, is like trying to perform a violin solo underwater...

I’ll begin at the beginning of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) instigated adventure. Today we had to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch our 10-hour flight to Seattle.

The path of Alessandro Agudio’s artistic practice intersects with some of this story: an important moment of institutional recognition for his work was his inclusion in Ennesima...

Since David K. Leff’s first book appeared over a decade ago, he has carved out a position in New England’s literary and environmental history. Some of his books, like Canoeing Maine’s Legendary Allagash, reach back to a Thoreauvian past

We are fast approaching a point where one third of the global population will play video games on a regular basis. As such, video gaming ought to become a serious object of philosophy...

Ten years ago today, the Telegraph began publishing, in daily instalments, the expense claims made by British MPs over the previous four years. 

In fandom, there are some people who express their love through hate. When I was at Star Trek, I remember being online, in the early days, like AOL, and there was a fan who was writing a review of one of the episodes I had written.

Monday is the first springlike day after a long stretch of drear, and in true mad-dogs-and-Englishmen style massive crowds are out to greet the midday sun. Swaddled in scaffolding, Big Ben is unrecognizable as it towers above the protests below.

On the last night of February 1986, the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and his wife, Lisbet, were strolling home through downtown Stockholm.

Derek defined his place in the great movements of poetry and history. He wrote, “I accept my function/as a colonial upstart at the end of an empire...

Sketch, Léon Cogniet, 1870 by M. Munro No agreement exists as to the possibility of defining negation, as to its logical status, function, and meaning, as to its field of applicability. “The mystery of negation: This is not how things are, and yet we can say how things are...

The final phase of voting in India recently concluded with approximately 62% turnout. If one is to pay attention to the outrageous exit polls, it looks like the joke is going to be on me...

Half a century ago, Lawrence Weiner noted these conditions for the work of art: The artist may construct the piece; the piece may be fabricated; the piece need not be built.

When the headmaster of Stowe argued that the widening participation measures to raise the proportion of state school students were "social engineering"...

The Literary Club, known simply as “The Club,” was established in early 1764 after the portrait painter Joshua Reynolds became worried about his friend Samuel Johnson...

You test the water with your elbow. You taste the milk before serving it. Is the temperature all right? Tenderness is throwing your body in the ring for someone else, is showing compassion...

Oil and sand are not often commodities conjoined in discussions of global trade. The first is the motive engine of industry and transportation, fuel for heating and illumination, the spirit that animates much global politics.

by Ed Simon He undertakes to write a Chronicle of things before they are done, which is an irregular, and a perverse way. —John Donne, from a sermon preached at Lincoln’s Inn, 1620 Between 1997 and 1998, representatives of His Majesty’s government stationed in Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Moscow...