Essays

Essays

Night Knowledge

What I learned at the club
Aria Aber
A Closer Look

An Unsettling Civil War Photograph

An image from the Battle of the Wilderness
Rachel Eisendrath
Essays

Quiver and Fixity

What I found returning to Thomas Hardy in midlife
Jhumpa Lahiri
Objects of Desire

A Night’s Sleep

An insomniac’s lifelong pursuit
Vincenzo Latronico
Essays

Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel?

A critic considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page
Michel Chaouli
Essays

The Body I Couldn't Abstract

Motherhood reshaped how I see shame, art, and the female body
Megan O’Grady

Browse

Essays

Essays

Jean Stein’s Rolodex

The legendary editor’s social genius
Benjamin Anastas
June 10, 2024
Essays

Louise Glück’s Late Style

The fabular turn in the poet’s last three books
Teju Cole
June 10, 2024
Essays

The Critic as Friend

The challenge of reading generously
Merve Emre
June 10, 2024
Objects of Desire

Absolute Darkness

A curious disorientation
Lydia Davis
June 3, 2024
The Moment

Palestinian Solidarity, Then and Now

The power of encampment as a form of protest
Feisal G. Mohamed
May 29, 2024
Objects of Desire

Tiger’s Eye Mala

The prayer beads that saw me through a feverish midlife crisis
Lauren Groff
May 22, 2024
Tribute

Paul Auster

Why the novelist’s brand of postmodern detective fiction still matters
Ben Libman
May 7, 2024
Essays

Yellow Band

A diagnosis alters a writer's relationship to his work
Steve Edwards
April 29, 2024
Objects of Desire

Omega Constellation

Unwinding what I lost
Alexander Chee
April 10, 2024
Essays

When Metaphor Gets Literal

What my mother’s coma taught me about reading poems
Jennifer Grotz
April 3, 2024