Essays

Essays [ssa_access]

Martha Foley’s Granddaughters

What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett

Essays [ssa_access]

To Catch a Sunset

Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love

Essays [ssa_access]

The Next New Thing

In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before

Essays [ssa_access]

Imperfecta

Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing

Essays [ssa_access]

The Widower’s Lament

After the death of the poet Wendy Barker, her grieving husband turns to the literature of loss

Essays [ssa_access]

The World at the End of a Line

The grandson of one of American literature’s Lost Generation novelists reflects on his namesake’s love of the sea

Essays [ssa_access]

The Goddess Complex

A set of revered stone deities was stolen from a temple in northwestern India; their story can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking

Essays [ssa_access]

Last Rites and Comic Flights

A funeral in a 1984 Japanese film offers moments of slapstick amid the solemnity

Ulysses at 100 [ssa_access]

The Believer

When nobody would touch Joyce’s manuscript, Sylvia Beach stepped in

What Killed My Sister?

The answer—schizophrenia—only leads to more perplexing questions

On Loneliness

We value our solitude until it pinches

The Making of PoBiz Farm

After it became our permanent home, we overfilled it with overloved horses and dogs

The Presence of Absence

Our losses give vitality to our lives

A Whole Day Nearer Now

But all life’s passion not quite spent

Where Are the People?

Evangelical Christianity in America is losing its power—what happened to Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral shows why

My Kingdom for a Wave

If your life as a public intellectual takes you to the highest crests, be prepared for the troughs that follow

My Friend Melanie Has Breast Cancer

How it might have happened, and why we are looking in the wrong places to prevent similar cases

Homeless in the City

A writer describes the decade he has spent living on the streets

● This week's archive pick

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