The author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age and The Immortal King Rao on memorable meals and books about whales.
Criticism
Posted inEditor's Pick
Deepfaking Orson Welles’s Mangled Masterpiece
“Will an A.I. restoration of ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ right a historic wrong or desecrate a classic?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer
“Between 2003 and 2019, Kevin Killian published almost twenty-four hundred reviews on the site. Can they be considered literature?”
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Paul Kix, Matthieu Aikins, Matt Alt, Elisa Gabbert, and Sophie Elmhirst.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Everybody Gets a Star
“Twenty years after its debut, Yelp has changed how we think about reviewing everything and anything.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Notorious Pitchfork Reviewer Was My Biggest Musical Influence
“Pitchfork reviews have always been just as much about where and how music fits in the culture as they have been about the music itself.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Silence Is the Loudest Part of ‘Renaissance: A Film’
“More than anything, ‘Renaissance’ is a testament that Beyoncé is a brand that stands for absolutely nothing beyond its own greatness.”
Posted inEssays & Criticism
Poets in the Machine
Why does the literary world still hold online writing at arm’s length?
Posted inFeature
A Hand From One Page, A Bomb From Another:Â Rethinking “Spy vs. Spy”
The iconic comic strip may seem simple, but its central metaphor has proven impossible to replicate.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Seeing Beyond the Beauty of a Vermeer
“The violence of his era can be found in his serene masterpieces — if you know where to look.”