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Paul Valéry Would Prefer Not To
One way of being a modernist writer is to pay attention to the most saliently modern objects and experiences. So it is that Proust…
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Great Books Don’t Make Great Films, but “Nickel Boys” Is a Glorious Exception
It’s harder to adapt a great book than an average one. Literary greatness often inhibits directors, who end up paying prudent homage to…
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Converting to Judaism in the Wake of October 7th
The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband. He’d grown up in an Orthodox family,…
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Houston’s Thriving West African Food Scene
The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple…
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The Surprisingly Sunny Origins of the Frankfurt School
One of the more reliable chemical reactions in European culture occurs when particles of German mental matter enter Italy. Suddenly,…
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Faustian Bargains in “Death Becomes Her” and “Burnout Paradise”
In a Faustian bargain, there’s little suspense about how things will end. The Devil doesn’t hand anything over—beauty, knowledge,…
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“The Franchise” Gives Hollywood the “Veep” Treatment
It’s fitting that the title of the new HBO comedy “The Franchise” makes no direct reference to the superhero movie around which it…
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The Art Dealer Who Wanted to Be Art
If you remember anything about this painting, may it be that the dog’s name is Noble. The black poodle in the bottom left greets us as a…
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The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.
Judging by how commonly birth control is practiced in the United States, it ought to rank among the least controversial of subjects. In…
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What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular…