Criticism

Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?

Critics mourn a bygone cultural era. But nostalgia for the new isn't new.
Louise Lawler’s yellowy dye-destruction print of Warhol’s “Round Marilyn”

Searching for Seamus Heaney

What I found when I resolved to read him

James Schuyler’s Genius

Why our greatest poet of the everyday has become a poet of the moment

The Elusive Poet of Desire

Why biographers can’t pin Cavafy down

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years

Terrence Malick’s Disciples

Why the auteur is the most influential director in Hollywood

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Criticism

Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?

Critics mourn a bygone cultural era. But nostalgia for the new isn't new.
June 8, 2026

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years
June 8, 2026

James Schuyler’s Genius

Why our greatest poet of the everyday has become a poet of the moment
March 16, 2026

Solvej Balle’s Philosophy of Time

How a novelist transformed a single day into a radical literary experiment
March 16, 2026

The Elusive Poet of Desire

Why biographers can’t pin Cavafy down
March 16, 2026

Who Was Shakespeare?

What Hamnet does—and doesn’t—get right
March 10, 2026

Searching for Seamus Heaney

What I found when I resolved to read him
December 15, 2025

Terrence Malick’s Disciples

Why the auteur is the most influential director in Hollywood
December 15, 2025

Thomas Pynchon Is Angry

In Shadow Ticket, the novelist takes on America’s indifference to history
October 27, 2025

Green, Lively, and Full of Decay

Why Claire-Louise Bennett’s epistolary style is the one for our times
September 8, 2025