What It Feels Like When Fascism Starts
A 1933 novel tracks the Nazis’ rise to power in real time.
Book Review
What a Famous Writer’s Early Work Can Teach Us About Failure
Marguerite Duras’s second novel, The Easy Life, shows that all writing is practice.
Why Read Literary Biography?
What Shirley Hazzard’s life can, and can’t, tell us about her fiction
The Reinvention of the Catholic Church
Scandals have taken a toll, and faith is flagging in Europe and the U.S. But Catholicism isn’t on the wane—it’s changing in influential ways.
‘That’s Just Like White Noise.’
Any writer with an interest in probing “American magic and dread”—to borrow a phrase from the novel—is probably in conversation with Don DeLillo, whether or not she knows it.
The Companies That Are Killing Creativity
Amazon and Spotify offer a raw deal for artists.
The Incandescent Wisdom of Cormac McCarthy
His two final novels are the pinnacle of a controversial career.
A Novel That Will Make You Laugh and Then Punch You in the Gut
Kevin Wilson’s Now Is Not the Time to Panic features narrators haunted, yet not bound, by troubled pasts.
How J. Edgar Hoover Went From Hero to Villain
Before his abuses of power were exposed, he was celebrated as a scourge of Nazis, Communists, and subversives.
Beware the ‘Storification’ of the Internet
We all need a lesson in close reading and a dose of skepticism—especially online.