Picking a fight
Why Argument Matters by Lee Siegel reviewed
Books
Monday
Sex and the city
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors reviewed
Poor little rich girls
Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies by Laura Thompson reviewed
The last conservative critic?
Jeet Heer wonders if Terry Teachout was the last of his kind
Thursday
Reading during a pandemic
There have always been brilliant books limited to small spaces and situations
Monday
Writing and the conservative impulse
All writers are, in a certain sense, conservative
Tuesday
Siri Hustvedt and saving the personal essay
It doesn’t need to die; it just needs to find a life beyond its author
Monday
‘The Fifth Head of Cerberus’ at 50
Check out Gene Wolfe’s minor masterpiece
Monday
Who killed Bambi?
The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten reviewed
The invisible hand
The Maid by Nita Prose reviewed
One hundred years of Ulysses
James Joyce’s Ulysses caused a sensation on its publication a century ago
On literary cross-dressing
The pre-woke literary world considered authorial freedom sacrosanct
Style and substance
Réginald-Jérôme de Mans evokes a Parisian world of glittering elegance
Stacking up
Substack gives authors an opportunity to take back control of their own careers and destinies
Thursday
Joan Didion got inside all of us
She was a woman to whom words mattered, whether writing about the Sixties gone wrong or California identity
Thursday
How black was the Obama presidency?
The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama by Claude A. Clegg III reviewed
Wednesday
The undying Christopher Hitchens
Ten years after his death, he remains an inspiration to those who applaud wit and freedom
Sunday
Saving Henry James’s Christmas ghost story from the critics
If you’ve never read it or only read it in graduate school, give it a try by the ole yule log
Sunday
How a small publisher survived the digital age
A book about books for book lovers
Thursday
Books of the Year 2021
Our best reads and most pertinacious page-turners of 2021
