Book Essay
Endless Rewriting
Helen Hazen
When a novice writer received a letter from Jacques Barzun, asking her to write a book, how could she have known what she was in for?
Prince of Poets
David J. Wasserstein
Mahmoud Darwish was the voice of the Palestinian people—chronicling not just the struggles and political injustices, but also the rhythms of daily life
An Unquenchable Gaiety of Mind
George Watson
On visits to Cambridge University late in life, Jorge Luis Borges offered revealing last thoughts about his reading and writing
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Essays From the Edge
Patricia Hampl
The Jazz Age novelist’s chronicle of his mental collapse, much derided by his critics, anticipated the rise of autobiographical writing in America
When Kerouac Met Kesey
Sterling Lord
The two counterculture heroes, one representing the Beat ’50s and one the psychedelic ’60s, had a lot less in common than you might expect
An Italian Tragedy
Janna Malamud Smith
Discovering a World War II tale that mesmerizes, then horrifies
Trial and Eros
Ben Yagoda
When Lady Chatterley's Lover ran afoul of Britain's 1959 obscenity law, the resulting case had a cast worthy of P.G. Wodehouse
Lunching on Olympus
Steven L. Isenberg
My meals with W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, and William Empson
Journeys with Joseph Mitchell
William Zinsser
Shylock, My Students, and Me
Paula Marantz Cohen
What I’ve learned from 30 years of teaching The Merchant of Venice
Living on $500,000 a Year
William J. Quirk
What F. Scott Fitzgerald's tax returns reveal about his life and times
Remembering John Updike
William H. Pritchard
A critic and his decades-long correspondence with one of America's best "freelance writers"
Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other’s Reticence
David A. Taylor
Letters between Federal Writers’ Project cohorts Richard Wright and Nelson Algren depict a mutual admiration rare among young novelists
The Swiveling Light of Truth
Roberta Silman
Remembering Grace Paley and her wise, fierce, funny, sad, innovative short stories
The Grasshopper and His Space Odyssey
Jeremy Bernstein
A scientist remembers the celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke
The Art of Literature and the Science of Literature
Brian Boyd
The delight we get from detecting patterns in books, and in life, can be measured and understood
Souls Hungering After Meaning
Michael Dirda
In Aegypt, John Crowley's just-completed four-book masterwork, ordinary people bear a faint symbolic glow through real and mythological realms
A Seductive Spectacle
Charles Trueheart
The languid bazaar of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet still beckons 50 years later
Going Native
Morris Dickstein
When American literature became good enough for Americans, what happened to the literary canon?
Tiny Tomes
Judith Pascoe
Literature in miniature has a 500-year history, but what's the appeal of a volume too small to read?
Why Read George Eliot?
Paula Marantz Cohen
Her novels are just modern enough—and just old-fashioned enough, too
Leading Men
Anne Matthews
Authorities on the Revolutionary era say how the Founding Fathers became culture heroes.
