Jillian Keenan on her new memoir, which delves into her lifelong obsessions with spanking and Shakespeare.
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Romantic Landscape: Going Mad in the Eternal City
How terrifying. I’m glad you’re recovering, I write back. I’m at a dinner party in Rome and I think I’m having some kind of breakdown. I’m scared. I’m not sure who I am anymore and I don’t have a concussion to blame it on. Or Percodan. Can you email Percodan? Sounds like we’re in the […]
The Fierce and Misty Flood: Barbara Comyns on the Quiet Seduction
Barbara Comyns’s novel Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (1950) follows the doomed marriage of two young, bohemian artists during England’s Great Depression. The excerpt below is a simple, gentle seduction; I love the way in which the protagonist, Sophia, swiftly and casually dismisses her husband and her own sense of identity. The scene strikes me […]
This Is to Mother You: On Caring for a Toxic Parent in Her Greatest Time of Need
When her challenging, cancer-ridden mother suffers a psychotic break, Jane Demuth searches for the wherewithal to help the person who once demanded the most of her.
To Have and To Hold
Jill Lepore explores the privacy arguments in the Supreme Court that defined reproductive rights versus the equality arguments that defined the fight for gay marriage.
The Evangelical Fervor for Amish Romance
In “More Titillated Than Thou,” Ann Neumann draws on her childhood memories of Lancaster, the findings of inspirational-lit critics, and her knowledge of evangelical purity culture.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * * 1. ‘They Ask for Equal Dignity in the Eyes of the Law’ (pdf) Justice Anthony Kennedy | The Supreme Court of the United States | June 26, […]
A Dead Superhero Is a Marvelous Corpse
A theory of superhero suffering and death.
A Stranger in the World: The Memoir of a Musician on Tour
The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay on DIY touring in the punk underground of the former Soviet Union.
The Life and Murder of Stella Walsh, Intersex Olympic Champion
Eighty years ago, in Berlin, Stella Walsh won her second Olympic medal. Decades later, Walsh’s murder and subsequent autopsy threw the legacy of track’s first female superstar into turmoil.

