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The Biddable Muse
November 12, 2015
If it had been up to me—and it really should have been—Playboy wouldn’t have abandoned its voyeuristic legacy of naked-lady photo spreads and centerfolds. Instead, I would’ve doubled down, expanded the magazine to the epic scale that, say, Vogue attains ...

For Whom the Phone Rings
September 29, 2015
A version of this essay was published at Salon.com in 2014.  It’s genius season again. From NPR to the New York Times, they’re talking about where people were when they found out they had won the MacArthur Fellowship, our society’s most prestigious honor. Twenty-one of ...

The Novel in Analog: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers
July 22, 2015
Reviewers are having a hard time with Book of Numbers, the latest novel from the incorrigibly ambitious and graphomaniacal Joshua Cohen. Responses have ranged from dismissive to enraptured, with most both at once. The book is “a mess,” writes the New York ...

Spoof Vs. Spy
June 12, 2015
Summer 2015’s first big blockbuster comedy, Spy, may traffic in elaborate onscreen subterfuge, but it’s little more than the latest variation on a baby-simple, well-worn Hollywood formula.The movie’s admittedly energetic and amusing aim is to lampoon and critique the ...

Shutting Up
June 09, 2015
This weekend, I used up one of my ten free monthly views of The New York Times to find film critic A.O. Scott declaring a national “humor crisis.” No, he wasn’t referring to any of his colleague Maureen Dowd’s perennial struggles with political humor; rather, he ...

Victor Serge, The Unconquered
May 25, 2015
Some writers are destined to have two deaths—the first in life, and the second in memory. The lucky ones can be resurrected from that second death by cultural circumstance and the aid of overseeing angels, irked by injustice, believing these Lazaruses should be helped from ...

Pep Talks for Spinsters
May 04, 2015
Here we go again! We are in another moment of pondering the benefits of marriage versus those of singlehood, with the all-important corollary question: Should we choose to become parents or go childfree? When I say we, I mean women, of course. As Elissa Strauss, writing for The ...

Free Speech Culture Warriors of the World, Unite
April 29, 2015
It can be hard keeping track of all the awards that PEN America gives out. The organization, devoted to promoting freedom of expression, offers some two dozen, for translations, essays, novels, plays, and seemingly, every single other literary form. (There are two awards for ...

Learning from Kanye: A Thought Experiment
February 24, 2015
Being a Kanye West defender in 2015 is a thankless task. Yeezy makes it hard: he’s frequently offensive and (I’m told) deeply unlikable. He’s been called arrogant, narcissistic, materialistic, pretentious, rude, insensitive, and insane. But this is exactly why I like him. ...

Blaspheming BuzzFeed
February 18, 2015
BuzzFeed isn’t just for listicles anymore, and whoever says otherwise is regurgitating outdated folk wisdom. Or, at least, that’s the prevailing meme ping-ponging around media circles (read: people I follow on Twitter). It’s true, BuzzFeed has changed. The company has ...

Propaganda, Power, and Porn in Fifty Shades
February 17, 2015
I may get kicked off the Internet for saying this. But, when you look at it from the right angle, the Fifty Shades of Grey movie is a feminist victory. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, the idea of “porn for women” was a huge and often painful feminist debate. Porn was said ...