Are They Not Mad?
January 29, 2021
Jonathan Rée— Without books, according to Hobbes, we could not be ‘excellently wise’, but on the other hand we would not be ‘excellently foolish’ either. “They which trust to books,… READ MORE
Category: Humanities
A Conversation with Michel Faïs
January 27, 2021
Earlier this month, Yale University Press published Mechanisms of Loss by Michel Faïs, translated from the Greek by David Connolly, a duet of provocative novellas that examine contemporary Greek identity and… READ MORE
Little Red Riding Hood
January 19, 2021
Alberto Manguel— There are characters whose name reveals their skin color (Snow White), their ability (Spiderman), their size (Thumbelina). Others, their dress. A short blood-colored cape defines the adventurous girl… READ MORE
A Conversation with Patrick Modiano
December 18, 2020
The latest work from Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, Invisible Ink is a spellbinding tale of memory and its illusions. Private detective Jean Eyben receives an assignment to locate a missing woman,… READ MORE
In Timbuktu with Jean Paul de Dadelsen
November 23, 2020
Two thousand and eleven, when palm trees without numberRustled, shading tomatoes and cucumbersAll around Timbuktu,And mental trees, planted by the town council,Offered orchards to every studious sibylAnd to sleepers too!… READ MORE
Beethoven’s ‘Last Musical Thought’
November 17, 2020
Laura Tunbridge— In 1840, the Berlin publisher Heinrich Schlesinger published a short piano piece as the Dernière pensée musicale de Louis van Beethoven. It was not, in fact, Beethoven’s “last musical… READ MORE
Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan
November 10, 2020
Anthony T. Kronman— I can now see that my anxious wish to master my world in thought has from the start been a longing to understand its relation to eternity,… READ MORE
In the Olive Orchard with Luigi Pirandello
November 6, 2020
Luigi Pirandello, the great twentieth-century Italian playwright, was also a maestro of the short story. In Virginia Jewiss’ introduction to her new translation of Pirandello’s short stories, she writes, “The Pirandello we meet here is a master storyteller,… READ MORE
The Brainiest Club in the World
November 3, 2020
Michael Wheeler— When John Wilson Croker, First Secretary to the Admiralty, wrote to Sir Humphry Davy, the leading British scientist of the day, on March 12, 1823, he continued an… READ MORE
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