EssayMrs. Dalloway's Midlife Crisis
Virginia Woolf’s wild run of creativity in her 40s included writing her masterpiece on the terrors and triumphs of middle age.
EssayWelcome to Stucktopia
Pop culture is serving up dark visions full of labyrinthine bunkers, endless loops and characters who feel hopelessly mired. Welcome to…
EssayThe Germans Who Stood Up to Hitler: An Essay on Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone
And the Germans who didn’t
EssayThe Art of Putting on Airs
In the 21st century, you are who you pretend to be. It’s a world Tom Ripley was made for.
EssayThe Eternal Scrutiny of Kate Middleton
Why people feel entitled to the Princess of Wales’s whereabouts
EssayA Memoirist Who Told All and Repented Nothing: An Essay on Diana Athill
Where Diana Athill excelled was at admitting, sans complaint or self-recrimination.
EssayThe Age of Innocence at a Moment of Increased Appetite for Eating the Rich
Edith Wharton’s novel, now a hundred, made its author wealthier than ever by offering up her own people for derision and envy.
EssaySeverance Predicted the Slow-Burn Performance of Our Pandemic
Like Ling Ma’s protagonist, we haven’t been shot out of a cannon and into a new world. We’re watching it unfold like a digitally broadcast…
EssayWhy Emma Is Still Jane Austen's Most Pleasurable Heroine
Go ahead. Judge the hell out of her. That’s the point.
EssayWe're All Amy
The Little Women character has served as our national totem of spoiled little turds for 151 years, as if we didn’t all yearn to be her.
EssayGone Boys: The Rise of Female Writers in the Aughts
Where are the Jonathans of yesteryear? Female authors dominated the 2010s, and replaced the Great American Novel with something better.
EssayThe Villainous Bitch Has Become the Most Boring Trend in Literature
We wanted unlikable narrators; we got an army of psychopathic she-beasts too shallow to hate.
Essay25 Years Ago The Virgin Suicides Kicked Off the American Obsession With Teenage Tragedy
Jeffrey Eugenides’s haunting, faux-nostalgic 1993 novel changed the way we consume adolescence in pop culture.