Style
Tame Impala Is an Obsessive, Not a Perfectionist
The magic of Parker’s music—what makes his records so restless, dithery, dynamic—hinges on the minuscule yet crucial difference between perfectionism (endlessly boring) and obsession (endlessly interesting). “Everyone thinks I’m...
Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda” Shoots Straight
Wresting “Hedda Gabler” from its theatrical confines, DaCosta effects a major structural transformation with graceful ingenuity: the party, which constitutes the entire field of action, is her invention. In...
Persistence: The Only True Difference Between Success and Failure
Success isn’t complicated. After years of building businesses and mentoring entrepreneurs, I’ve collected plenty of advice, but the most powerful insight came from an unexpected source: Seth Rogen. His...
D’Angelo’s Genius was Pure, and Rare
This week, the R. & B. singer D’Angelo died at age fifty-one, of cancer. He was best known for deftly combining the heft and tenderness of soul music with the ingenuity...
Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” Reinvents the Heist Movie
One of the joys of reviewing movies is witnessing a longtime filmmaker’s artistic breakthrough, as has happened with Kelly Reichardt. A serious director with a principled world view, she...
Do You Know What I Know?
Take your young kid with you as you commute through Penn Station and you’ll find that you have a lot to explain. Walking through the Long Island Railroad concourse,...
Diane Keaton’s Shadows and Light
In Vanity Fair in 1987, Keaton told Joan Juliet Buck, “I was always pretty religious as a kid, but I had trouble with Jesus early on because I couldn’t...
Peter Matthiessen Travelled the World, Trying to Escape Himself
But it wasn’t until he arrived in Paris, during his junior year abroad, that he could truly nurture his bohemian streak. The city was still reeling from the Second...
The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Story
I read George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” sometimes hailed as the greatest British novel, in a rain forest in western Indonesia. I was there as a graduate student, spending my days...
Harry Bliss’s “Cannonball”
For the cover of the October 20, 2025, issue, the cartoonist Harry Bliss wanted to share a recent experience that filled him with joy. “With apologies to my wife,...
