Essays

Essays

The Critic as Friend

The challenge of reading generously
Merve Emre
The Moment

A Reviewer’s Life

The material constraints of writing criticism today
Christine Smallwood
The Moment

Palestinian Solidarity, Then and Now

The power of encampment as a form of protest
Feisal G. Mohamed
Tribute

Paul Auster

Why the novelist’s brand of postmodern detective fiction still matters
Ben Libman
Essays

Critical Navel-Gazing

If criticism is in crisis, it’s not the critic’s problem
Namwali Serpell
Essays

I, Too, Am John Clare

Becoming a different kind of postcolonial writer
Amit Chaudhuri

Browse

Essays

An image of an old coin.
Essays

The Virtues and Vices of Speech

On truthfulness, deception, flattery, and more
Giovanni Gioviano Pontano
and
G. W. Pigman III
July 1, 2019
A still image from film of a creature running through the woods who appears to look like Bigfoot.
essays

The Wild Man Within

Peter Matthiessen’s Bigfoot
Jeff Wheelwright
July 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

I Harbor a Stillborn Scribe of the German Tongue in Me

On Germans and Jewishness
Peter Wortsman
May 13, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

What We Leave

Stealing pants from a rockstar
Sara Schaff
April 15, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Cremation Society of Kentucky

A life in burned flesh
Raymond Abbott
April 8, 2019
Louie Bellson lighting Pearl Bailey's cigarette
Essays

Cultural Differences

How fictional portrayals of intermarriage haven't quite caught up
Jennifer Acker
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Music in the Second Person

Listening to Opus 110
Mark Mazullo
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Myth and Anarchy

Matthew Spellberg
April 1, 2019
A photograph of Ann Petry.
Essays

Nothing New Under the Sun

Ann Petry’s The Street and The Narrows
Emily Bernard
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

The Hall-Mills Murder Trial, 1926

A consideration of death
Harold Schechter
April 1, 2019