Madame Bovary, c’est moi. The phrase, often attributed to Gustave Flaubert, may be better known than any line in his novels. But many scholars consider the remark to be apocryphal. It has trickled down through history thirdhand, first appearing in a footnote to a study of Flaubert by the scholar René Descharmes, in 1909. Descharmes … Read more
Lore Segal, who died on Monday, at the age of ninety-six, published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1961, and her final one two weeks ago, some sixty-three years later. Her earliest work for the magazine drew on memories of her last days in Vienna, the city of her birth, as the … Read more
Last spring, a graduate student in social anthropology—let’s call him Chris—sat down at his laptop and asked ChatGPT for help with a writing assignment. He pasted a few thousand words, a mix of rough summaries and jotted-down bullet points, into the text box that serves as ChatGPT’s interface. “Here’s my entire exam,” he wrote. “Don’t … Read more
The 2024 class of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellows includes more writers, artists, and storytellers than in years past, though the so-called genius grants list also includes multiple scientists. The interdisciplinary awards announced Tuesday come with a $800,000 grant over five years that the 22 recipients—including fiction writer Ling Ma, poet … Read more
.JPG "The Temporary License of Literary Bratdom")
Goodbye forever, brat summer. Thanks to you, slime green has joined the viral color pantheon alongside minion yellow and millennial pink. When our fairy bratmother, the pop star Charli XCX, named her sixth album “brat,” she inaugurated a season of performative abandon and luxe, hedonistic trashiness. “Seeming a little immature, a little selfish, a little … Read more
‘Mirzapur Season 3‘ starring Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Vijay Varma, Shweta Tripathi Sharma, and more, delves deep into the power struggles and thirst for revenge in the lawless town of Uttar Pradesh.Much like the audience, Sherrnavaz Sam Jijina, who plays Shabnam, is eagerly anticipating what happens next and who will ultimately reign as the king … Read more
The poet Diane Seuss and I began a recent conversation by talking about the burdens of companionship—or, at least, how those burdens are manifested through affection for a pet. Seuss lost her dog Bear during the pandemic. When we spoke, by phone, she was at home in Michigan preparing her new dog, Stella—whom she described … Read more
Benjamen Walker, the creator and host of “Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything,” is a pod-maker of the mad-scientist variety: he cooks up projects using his own zeal, research, and audacious notions, then unleashes the results on the world. “Theory of Everything,” which originated in 2004, a decade before the podcast boom, has always been intellectually … Read more
.jpg "Obituary: Alice Munro Reinvigorated the Short Story")
“I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‘call attention to yourself,’ or ‘think you were smart,’ ” Alice Munro, who died on Monday, at age ninety-two, once said. She rebelled against this edict, of course, but it stayed with her. There was, in her writing, often a very deliberate, … Read more
Paul Auster, a prolific, prize-winning man of letters and filmmaker known for such inventive narratives and meta-narratives as The New York Trilogy and 4321, has died at age 77. Auster’s death was confirmed on May 1 by his literary representatives, the Carol Mann Agency, which did not immediately provide additional details. Auster had been diagnosed … Read more
