Writing and the conservative impulse
All writers are, in a certain sense, conservative
Books
Monday
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
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece is finally appearing
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reviewed
The Road Not Traveled
A short story
Wednesday
Fawning over Kamala
A new book attempts the impossible but offers little beyond platitudes
The return of Thomas Pynchon?
The mysterious novelist posts on a movie character’s Twitter account — or does he?
Sunday
Lionel Trilling against cancel culture
The great liberal critic would have detested the left’s attempts to cleanse art and history
