Inside the world of Louise BourgeoisW riting when I am in pain feels painful and is the opposite of what I want and am able to do. When I am in pain I find it impossible to take hold of the pen. My ...

H arper’s Magazine turns 175 this month, but New Books is only twenty-three—too young to rent a car without incurring an additional fee. It feels older, doesn’t it? Those two imperious monosyllables, ...

It would be misleading to imply that Airless Spaces is a book about Firestone’s experiences with schizophrenia. Most of the stories are not about madness, per se—there’s very little mention of what ...

One of five kids, Crumb was born in 1943 to Chuck, an enlisted Marine, and Bea, a diner waitress. In the span of a few years, Chuck’s posts took the family from Pennsylvania to Iowa to California, ...

By Ellen Ullman, from Life in Code, which will be published next month by MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ullman is a former computer programmer and the author of three previous books.

O nce, on a river-rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, I traveled with a charming, good-humored man who happened to run an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He liked to rail against Nancy Pelosi, who ...

“F ar as the east from even, / Dim as the border star, / Life is the little creature / That carries the great cigar.” So wrote Emily Dickinson, with some unfortunate help from a computer. As I read ...

But then, most major religions got their growing pains out of the way before the public eye was quite so glaring. Mormonism had to come of age amid the trappings of modernity—nosy newspapermen, ...

Discussed in this essay: Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World, by Mary Beard. Liveright. 512 pages. $39.99. I f men think about the Roman Empire all the time, they do not do it under ...

On Annie Ernaux’s spectacular impersonalityDiscussed in this essay: A Girl’s Story, by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer. Seven Stories Press. 160 pages. $18.95. A Man’s Place, by Annie ...

COVID-19 and the new science warsI nvoking science and data to resolve ethical and ideological controversies obscures the values and interests of particular groups and policymakers. Anyone governing ...

I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended ...