I need to tell you about the Cirque of the Unclimbables. Ever since I went there, I’ve tried to describe it to friends and family, tried to explain its power and its perfection. It is, I tell people, the best natural campsite I have ever visited. It’s also among the most beautiful eyefuls of landscape […]
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Joan Didion Dismissed ‘Franny and Zooey’ as a Self-Help Book ‘for Sarah Lawrence Girls’
In 1961, Joan Didion reviewed J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey for The National Review.
Postwar New York: The Supreme Metropolis of the Present
Forty labor strikes on one day, French existentialists on the loose, and a 50-foot G.I. blowing enormous puffs of REAL smoke.
How the Brontës Came Out As Women
When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
The Almost-Real Science in ‘Orphan Black’
If you’re not watching “Orphan Black,” a BBC sci-fi drama about six? eight? twelve? clones, each played by the unbelievably talented Tatiana Maslany: start. Today, preferably.
Ben Lerner on Real-Life Experiences in Fiction
The author talks with The Believer about how real experiences make their way into books.
A Dead Superhero Is a Marvelous Corpse
A theory of superhero suffering and death.
Do Modern Readers Only Want to Read Easy Books?
Dear Thief is, without a doubt, stronger and more raw, the book her fans knew she could write. But just when the world should have behaved as if it had been waiting for that very novel to arrive, Harvey’s career seemed to lose momentum. Her editor Dan Franklin explains, a little despairingly, that “the really […]
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners
The Pulitzer Prizes winners have been announced: Bloomberg News’s Zachary R. Mider was awarded a prize for explanatory reporting on corporate tax dodgers. Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post was awarded a national reporting award for her coverage of security lapses in the Secret Service. The New York Times won an international reporting award for its coverage of the Ebola break in West Africa. Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle was given the award for commentary for her columns about grand jury abuses. Mary McNamara, a TV critic for the Los Angeles Times was awarded a prize for criticism. A list of the all the winners and finalists can be found here. Below is a short list of other features that were honored today.
