Elizabeth Harper traveled to Bonito, Italy to visit Zio Vincenzo. Long-lost relative? No, miracle-working mummified corpse of a nameless Neapolitan.
Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted inEditor's Pick
Reach Out and Touch Faith
On venerating Uncle Vincent and the saints who can never be saints.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Writing
The 1923 Novel That Helps Us Understand Today’s Racial Climate
‘Cane’ is a series of vignettes about life in rural Georgia told from the point of view of an ambivalently black teacher from the north.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Philippe Petit Reflects on a Lifetime of Fear
For the high-wire artist, living in fear is the definition of death.
Posted inCurrent Events, History, Nonfiction, Quotes
‘Wir Schaffen Das’: Angela Merkel, the Refugee Crisis, and the Complexity Behind a Simple Statement Like ‘We Will Do It’
In Lapham’s Quarterly, Renata Adler returns to her familial homeland to explore Germany’s present-day reaction to the millions of people now trying to get in rather than out.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Brontosaurs Whistling in the Dark
Reflections on Angela Merkel’s and Germany’s attitude toward refugees, from a daughter of refugees who themselves fled Germany in the 1930.
Posted inFeatured, Nonfiction, Reading List
The Lives of Nuns, Part 2: A Reading List
In the two years since I compiled the first installation of “The Lives of Nuns,” Autostraddle wrote about queer nuns in history, Racked shadowed (fake) nuns growing marijuana, and The Huffington Post reported on a nun’s murder and the students who want the truth. Those stories and more are included below. Seclude yourself and read.
Posted inFeatured, Nonfiction, Quotes
Temptation, Purity, and High-Stakes Evangelism in a Texas Town
Jeff Sharlet spends a day with the sexually pure teens of Battlecry Honor Academy, and learns that renouncing your sins doesn’t mean redacting their memories.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Mortal Enemy, Immortal Ally: How Writers Measure Time
Time carried back to the future, once again seen and understood as it was in antiquity, not only as mortal enemy but also as immortal ally. The counterrevolution against the autocratic regime of uniform, global time (commercially and politically imperialist) was pressed forward by many of the artists and writers of Einstein’s generation unwilling to […]
