Winter Nights
December 9, 2019
Francis Spufford— Here comes the winter night. If we were our oldest ancestors, tucked into draughty recesses of caves with blue hands hugged around us as we slept, we’d be… READ MORE
Category: Literature
Why Munch Painted
November 12, 2019
Karl Ove Knausgaard— I knew why Munch painted, I knew it so well that I could articulate it with a single sentence. And it resembles the sentence spoken by the… READ MORE
Seduced by Characters—Q&A with Alberto Manguel
October 17, 2019
Yale University Press: What is your earliest memory of connecting deeply with a literary character? How old were you, who was it, and what do you remember feeling at the… READ MORE
Why Jewish Writers Avoid the “Jewish Writer” Label
October 14, 2019
Adam Kirsch— Several years ago, I moderated a discussion between two novelists at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan. The setting seemed appropriate, since these were Jewish writers who… READ MORE
Oppenheim’s Library: A Window into Jewish Culture
October 7, 2019
Joshua Teplitsky— In January of 2019, Netflix launched a new television program for audiences who had enjoyed previous “home improvement” style shows about living more efficiently with greater style and… READ MORE
Understanding Literacy
September 9, 2019
Beth Barton Schweiger— The power of literacy’s hold on the modern imagination cannot easily be measured. One way to begin to comprehend it is to pose a question: who is… READ MORE
Why We Read
August 8, 2019
Azar Nafisi— Reading is like Alice running after that white rabbit, because she is curious; she wants to know more about a talking rabbit. She is prepared to take the… READ MORE
Dante’s Pioneering Poetry and Science
July 25, 2019
Tracy Daugherty— “At some deep level, poetry and physics are similar endeavors,” writes Mark A. Peterson, a mathematician and science historian. Both the poet and the scientist use the tools… READ MORE
A Time to Write and a Time to Resist
July 17, 2019
David G. Roskies— Writing, we are told, is a form of resistance. The act of writing is an assertion of one’s selfhood, one’s right to live, think and feel in… READ MORE
Book of Collateral Damage
June 4, 2019
Sinan Antoon— A drop of sweat fell on the edge of the piece of paper and I stopped reading. His handwriting was neat and confident. The ink was black, maybe… READ MORE
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