Discussed in this essay: Collected Works, by Charles Portis. Library of America. 1,105 pages. $45. N ot long before Charles Portis visited Buckingham Palace in the summer of 1964, having secured a ...

Notes on humiliationT he first time I understood humiliation as world-destroying was the morning I watched the World Trade Center evaporate from a street corner in Greenwich Village and found myself ...

The ecstatic cult of Nicolas CageDiscussed in this essay: Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career, by Keith Phipps. Henry Holt. 288 pages. $27.99. L ast fall, hoping to draw ...

I first read the Book of Revelation in a green pocket-size King James New Testament published by the motel missionaries Gideons International. I was in seventh grade. I remember reading the tiny Bible ...

Against “relevance” in artB ecause these battles are still being fought, I hesitate to articulate the ways in which I think our use of the word “relevant” is distorting our appraisals of art. But I ...

How forests adapt to climate changeN inety minutes west of Boston, up the road from a Benedictine monastery, lies what is perhaps the most studied forest on Earth. Since 1907, when the first of these ...

On the numerous occasions when I’ve been questioned about Donald Trump’s election, I’ve replied that I don’t give a shit. France isn’t Wyoming or Arkansas. France is an independent country, more or ...

Discussed in this essay: Warhol, by Blake Gopnik. Ecco. 976 pages. $45. One thing I miss is the time when America had big dreams about the future. Now it seems like nobody has big hopes for the future ...

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 ...

How not to become an anarchistDiscussed in this essay: The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Harper Perennial. 400 pages. $16.99. The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Farrar, ...

On Elizabeth McCracken’s irreducible fictionDiscussed in this essay: The Hero of This Book, by Elizabeth McCracken. Ecco. 224 pages. $26.99 I n 1996, upon my arrival in the United States, I attended a ...

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 ...