CATEGORIES

FALLING BEHIND

What's the matter with men?

EAT, PRAY, CONCENTRATE

What monks can teach us about paying attention.

Different People

When Gilly was young, she lied to her diary. It was not a toy diary. She had dutifully filled several of those already, notebooks in girlish colors, with ostentatious locks and miniature keys.

LETTER FROM TBILISI- NOVELS OF EMPIRE

Rereading Russian classics in the shadow of the Ukraine war.

PERSONAL HISTORY- ONE OF A KIND

When you're a medical patient, being unique can have its drawbacks.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESERVATION

Thank you for booking at The Bai-ley. You are confirmed for four people at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, January 20th. Before we welcome you to our restaurant, a few housekeeping items, to insure that your visit with us is exceptional—and to avoid misunderstandings.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

Republicans are, unsurprisingly, in an uproar over the discovery, in three different locations associated with President Joe Biden—his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a room in his Delaware home, and his garage—of documents marked as classified.

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Those fretting over the future of indie rock can rest assured that the music has found stylish caretakers in the bandmates of Horsegirl, who débuted their trio while still in high school, in Chicago—they’re now spending their college years in New York.

A Critic at Large: the American Beast

Accounting for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Everyone's a Critic

What are literary studies for?

Annals of Innovation Build Better

Can 3-D printing help solve the housing crisis?

TWO FOR THE ROAD

\"The Last of Us,\" on HBO.

THE BOOK OF LOVE

Reimagining the Victorian reformers who defended same-sex desire.

THE ROYAL ME

In \"Spare,\" Prince Harry must be cruel only to be kind.

Wednesday's Child Yiyun Li

The difficulty with waiting, Rosalie thought, is that one can rarely wait in absolute stillness. Absolute stillness?—that part of herself, which was in the habit of questioning her own thoughts as they occurred, raised a mental eyebrow. No one waits in absolute stillness; absolute stillness is death; and when you’re dead you no longer wait for anything. No, not death, Rosalie clarified, but stillness, like hibernation or estivation, waiting for . . . Before she could embellish the thought with some garden-variety clichés, the monitor nearby rolled out a schedule change: the 11:35 train to Brussels Midi was cancelled.

PROFILES A RAUCOUS ASSAULT

How the Iranian American artist Tala Madani sees men and women.

THE SWAMP

Could corruption have led Alex Murdaugh to murder his wife and son?

A Critic at Large – Blood Lines

Seventy-five years after Indian Partition, have we learned how to say what happened?

THE CURRENT: CINEMA COLLUSION

“Saint Omer” and Turn Every Page.”

THE THEATRE: LANDS OF THE LOST

London’ Orlando,” My Neighbour Totoro,” and The Burnt City.”

DEEP CUTS

Franz Kafka’ diaries reveal a writer who was antic as well as agonized.

HAMMER ATTACK

Three Virgin Marys kept their baleful eyes on the back of Allen’s head. But more powers were needed—of clemency, of healing—so, to accompany the dolorous mothers, somebody had also taped to the wall behind Allen’s hospital bed half a dozen Jesuses (a few were laminated), the famous “Last Supper” painting, and a grave-looking figure who, Alice, one of Allen’s sisters, told Gina, was St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, of last hope.

U.S. JOURNAL: THE TOTAL PACKAGE

UPS offers old-fashioned middle-class jobs, so why is a strike looming?

PROFILES: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE

The executive leading Netflixs quest for worldwide domination.

ANNALS OF INQUIRY: THOUGHT PROCESS

What really goes on between our ears?

THE INFINITE-MONKEY THEOREM: FIELD NOTES

SHOUTS MURMURS

LETTER FROM ITALY: THE MISSING

Many migrants disappear on their way to Europe. Most are never identified.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

In “How to Lie with Statistics,” a best-selling book from 1954, the journalist (and tobacco apologist) Darrell Huffdetails common techniques for manipulating people’s understanding of reality, among them truncating the y-axis of a graph.

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The Public’s Under the Radar, now in its eighteenth installment, is a lively showcase of experimental performance. Last year’s edition was scuttled by the Omicron surge, but the festival returns, through Jan. 22, with work contemplating desire, loss, queerness, chain restaurants, and King Leopold II. Among the offerings: LatinXoxo,” by the Venezuelan-born performance artist Migguel Anggelo above), who uses Spanish boleros, comedy, and pop songs to subvert Latin-lover tropes and his own father’s machismo.

Onward and Upward With the Arts - Game Theory

Can a critically acclaimed video game be turned into a hit HBO series?