What makes things interesting to the reader? It depends on the quality of writing and perception—which, I suppose, is what ...

It’s a good time to investigate the paradoxes and special strangeness of Andy Kaufman and Paul Reubens, oddly alike in some ...

But Goshen was not an attempt at charity. It was, according to my parents’ interpretation of scripture, a tangible ...

Casting Miss World 1994 as the second-prettiest sister would make the metaphysics of their romance totally unrecognizable ...

Emma has been called a detective novel, and with good reason: the fun of first reading it consists largely in scrutinizing ...

In 1929, after a nine-year silence, Fernando Pessoa renewed his correspondence with Ophelia Queiroz, with whom he had enjoyed the only romance of his life. Where his earlier letters, from 1920, found ...

The cartoon character Mafalda, with her massive round head, sixties bob, triangular dress, and black Mary Janes, appears innocent. But this inquisitive girl-against-the-world is no ingenue—Mafalda ...

In 2008, Rivka Galchen published Atmospheric Disturbances, a novel about a psychiatrist who wakes up one day to discover that his wife has been substituted by a replica. He subscribes to the delusions ...

In December 1903, Thomas Mann wrote his older brother, Heinrich, a long letter reviewing the latter’s novel—with brutal candor. Some of the most scathing bits are below. The complete missive is in The ...

Agosto Machado’s apartment and studio on East Third Street is crammed, floor to ceiling, with steel bookcases bursting with ...

Who hasn’t had a boss, supervisor, or mentor worthy of complaint? The first person I worked for, who was white, was in the habit of calling me “weak.” Her boss’s boss, also white, one day gave a ...

Usually, institutional libraries are governed by highly codified policies. Their catalogues are their raison d’être, elegant data structures that facilitate easy circulation and millennial continuity.