Essays
“The rope that keeps me from floundering”: On Michel Leiris
First exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon, Olympia by Édouard Manet, was immediately greeted with shock and outrage. The response was so virulent that, as contemporary journalist Antonin Proust later…
The Scandalous Confessions of a Lesbian Formalist Poet
I am saying that you must be a poet, because you are asking so many questions.
Two translated essays by Suzanne Brøgger
“Happiness is losing something” and “Who needs witches?” translated by Michael Goldman.
Infinite Metabolism: Lispector’s Consumptions
And what if we are, I am, you are that marginalized person? When I erase myself, what do I become?
The Path
When someone shoots a dark look, I think it is because I am a middle-aged white woman with a spirited black child.
The gay-suicide stereotype kills gay people, and must end
Friedrich Alfred Krupp, heir to the mammoth Krupp armaments business and the wealthiest man in Germany, committed suicide on 22 November 1902. Only a week before, a socialist newspaper had…
A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments
Civilisation is back. But it is no longer the preserve of “Renaissance man” or of “the West,” or even of literate societies. Civilisation is a way of talking about human…
“I Am Not Your Muse” and Other Lies Our Teacher Told Me
Colleen McClary’s crimson lips upturned at the corners. “I am not your muse and every good story is based around a problem.” I thought she looked like a beautiful witch….
It Puzzles the Will: Hamlet and Suicide
Madeline Levine, the celebrated author of Teach Your Children Well, recently gave a talk to the faculty of three loosely aligned independent schools, including my own. She said a lot…