Nonfiction

Essays

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
Christina Sharpe
Books

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
Chris Ware
Books

Is Blasphemy Illiberal?

Salman Rushdie’s thoroughly modern controversies
Len Gutkin
Art

How Mike Kelley Became Himself

The artist’s search for subcultural America
Jonathan Griffin
Objects of Desire

Richard Pryor

A fiction
Hilton Als
Essays

The Path to Playwright

Discovering my literary hero in an unlikely place
Sonya Kelly

Browse

Nonfiction

From the Archives

Revisionists Revised

Louis Menand
October 1, 1984
From the Archives

Mallarmé and Bataille

Richard Howard
October 1, 1982
From the Archives

The Future of Democracy

Richard J. Barnet
September 1, 1982
From the Archives

Byron and Mr. Briggs

With an introduction by Edward A. Hungerford
Virginia Woolf
March 1, 1979
An abstract print by Jacob van Heemskerck.
Essays

Naming, Being, and Black Experience

Yale’s first Black professor on the presence or absence of names, their status and their scope.
Michael G. Cooke
December 1, 1977
A photograph of a tree.
Essays

The Tolstoyans

On my father's followers
Alexandra Tolstoy
and
Spencer Barnes
December 1, 1977
From the Archives

Reading and Misreading

Jonathan Culler
October 1, 1975
Detail of a microchip
Essays

Creativity, Poetic Language, and the Computer

What's distinctly human about writing a poem?
Marie Borroff
June 1, 1971
From the Archives

The Function of Criticism Once More

Robert Langbaum
December 1, 1964
From the Archives

The Idea of Perfection

Iris Murdoch
March 1, 1964