Nonfiction

Memoir

Writing

Unpublished journal entries
Annie Ernaux
Objects of Desire

My Screenshots

In search of lost memes
Sarah Thankam Mathews
The Moment

The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial
Samuel Moyn
Essays

The End of Books

What happened when a dumpster arrived behind my university's library
Sheila Liming
Ideas

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years
Kathryn Lofton
Essays

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels
Namwali Serpell

Browse

Nonfiction

From the Archives

Achieving the Impossible: Thomas Mann

Henry Hatfield
June 1, 1977
From the Archives

Psychotherapy and Moral Culture: A Psychiatrist’s Field Report

Fred Bloom
March 1, 1977
From the Archives

Reading and Misreading

Jonathan Culler
October 1, 1975
From the Archives

Pynchon’s Gravity

Edward Mendelson
July 1, 1973
Detail of a microchip
Essays

Creativity, Poetic Language, and the Computer

What's distinctly human about writing a poem?
Marie Borroff
June 1, 1971
From the Archives

Reminiscences of Thomas Mann

Konrad Kellen
March 1, 1965
From the Archives

The Function of Criticism Once More

Robert Langbaum
December 1, 1964
From the Archives

The Idea of Perfection

Iris Murdoch
March 1, 1964
From the Archives

New Books in Review

Poems and Books of Poems
Thom Gunn
October 1, 1963
From the Archives

Politics and Technology

Edward T. Chase
April 1, 1963