On Nonfiction
“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…
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…
Weather Democracy
Twenty-first century Americans face two seemingly separate and intractable crises, either one of which could bring the modern way of life, and perhaps many lives as well, to an end….
Despotism is all around us: the warnings of Montesquieu
It is commonplace for citizens of liberal, democratic nations to believe that despotism is foreign to their own experiences. Their political constitutions display in some form or other a separation…
We should all be more like Steve Martin
I got the chance recently to see a performance of Steve Martin and Martin Short’s new comedy tour “An Evening You Will Forget For the Rest of Your Life.” And…
All that’s left: the art of Teresa Margolles
Photo: Teresa Margolles, Lemas (Mottos), 2009. Fabric impregnated with blood gathered from the places where murders took place embroidered with gold threads / Intallation view: What Else Could We Talk…
We’re all so proud of you, signed David Sedaris
Earlier this summer, I brought my fresh copy of Theft by Finding to Common Good Bookstore in St. Paul to have it signed by David Sedaris. Having never met him…
From the Editors: the Motherhood Issue
We’re trying to think back to the origins of A. Bradstreet: We remember that I was working in the Poetry Room at Harvard. That I came by to drop off…
Greater Boston Writers Resist
Jan 16, 2017 | Hundreds of Greater Boston residents convened at the Boston Public Library yesterday for a demonstration of shared commitment to the rights and values essential to a democracy….