From mass deportations, to torture and waterboarding, to dipping bullets in pig’s blood, Donald Trump is systematically redefining what is acceptable to say in American politics and perhaps eventually what is acceptable to do in American government. Election year 2016 is coming to seem like a remake…

In 1847, as Charlotte Brontë’s first novel was bounced yet again to Haworth parsonage, her sisters Emily and Anne made a deal with a London publisher to bring out their novels, “ Wuthering Heights ” and “ Agnes Grey .” Charlotte read her sisters’ books and took what she needed. Enough with restraint…

The Judd Apatow canon is, among other things, a repulsive and charming parade of so-called nice guys. These include, to name a few, the actual Nice Guy (Nick Andopolis, played by Jason Segel in Freaks & Geeks ), the lazy-stoner Nice Guy (Ben Stone, played by Seth Rogen, in Knocked Up ), the…

Here’s a little experiment my partner and I have beenrunning for the last five years: We go to a restaurant with table service. Heorders, say, the squash risotto, being a vegetarian. I, a murderous omnivore,order the pork chop. Then we sit back to see how often we end up switchingplates when our…

The Circle by Dave Eggers Robert Gumpert/NB Pictures/Contact Press Images Dave Eggers, 2007 The Circle is Dave Eggers’s tenth work of fiction, and a fascinating item it is. Eggers’s first major book was the much-acclaimed semifictional memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), which…

Google’s London HQ: ‘Eggers's innovative optimism has paused at the frontiers of social media, looking forward to an encroaching nightmare.' Photograph: Penson/ Rex Features I t wasn't long ago that Dave Eggers appeared at the cutting edge of American literature, breaking new ground with his…

Rui Tenreiro “The last time I was in New York,” Karl Ove ­Knausgaard wrote recently in The New York Times Magazine, in his account of traveling through the ­United States, “a well-known American writer invited me for lunch. . . . I tried desperately to think of something to say. We had to have…

For straight and bisexual women, two things are always goingto be mixed up: the desire for men and the desire to meet societalexpectations. There’s a lot of convenience in having your sexual orientationline up with what most social organizations—families, communities, workplaces,and so forth—expect.…

NOVEMBER 10, 2015 HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW. By various means of seduction, coercion, and co-optation, everyday life has been irresistibly colonized by forces collectively known as Big Data: the corporations and state agencies that use communications networks and digital surveillance to amass huge…

Mark Shaver for The Chronicle Review H emingway got one. So did Faulkner, his stylistic rival. Nabokov, naturally. Austen, of course. Conrad made the list; Twain, too. Wilde. Both Woolf and Melville merited a pair. Beckett, three. Six for Shakespeare. The writers with entire sessions devoted to…

Review by Alfie Bown Samo Tomšič, The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan (Verso, 2015) pp. 272 Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy, whilst not without its detractors and opponents, has again and again proved to be powerful, influential and massively popular. Žižek is regularly pitted against a stream of…

EVERY YEAR, one expects that the best films of the year will adhere to certain tired genre conventions: biopics of great artists, period romances, and of course, a Holocaust film or two. Ever since the success of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in 1993, Holocaust films have emerged as their own…

Does the political party you identify with have an influence on what you find funny? Recent trends in TV viewing habits overwhelmingly suggest that it does. In 2011, a survey conducted by Experian-Simmons for Entertainment Weekly found very little confluence between the TV shows watched by Democrats…

2016. gada 16. februārī Izdrukas versija Ilmārs Šlāpins: Kā izdzīvot bēgļu straumē? Vērojot nerimstošās diskusijas bēgļu jautājumā, ir viegli novilkt estētisku līniju – ir retorikas zona, kas man nepatīk "kā izskatās". Ir sejas, kas izkliedz saukļus, un es saprotu, ka man nepatīk šie cilvēki, jo…

Raksta iesākumā piedāvāšu pavisam īsu feminisma definīciju, vienlaikus atgādinot par tā izcelsmi un feminisma trim viļņiem. Tālāk pievērsīšos stereotipiem par feminismu, kas, manuprāt, Latvijā iedalāmi divās lielās grupās: pirmkārt, stereotipi, kas tiek saistīti ar feministes tēlu nosacītā publiskā…

Conquering audiences and readers ... Mathieu Kassowitz as Napoleon in the BBC’s 2016 adaptation of War and Peace.Photograph: Robert Viglasky/BBC/Robert Viglasky Alison Flood Last modified on Wednesday 17 February 2016 02.02 EST This article is 8 months old Britain is racing to address the fact that…

Their relationship sharply plummets 24 hours in … Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust in Love.Photograph: Suzanne Hanover/Netflix E arly on in the new Netflix series Love, freshly uncoupled protagonist Gus begins hurling his treasured Blu-ray collection from a moving car. Out goes Pretty Woman. Then Sweet…

Exasperating … Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and others in The Big Short.Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures via AP A wards season is a time for some movies to be Enronised. Reputations get inflated. And Adam McKay’s The Big Short is overvalued stock. As if assembled at some gigantic dinner…

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. For more information, see our privacy statement New Left Review I/83, January-February 1974 Wally Secombe The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism The re-emergence of a women’s movement in the late…

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In the sage words of the novelist William Maxwell, “It is impossible to say why people put so little value on complete happiness.” The psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips has, for some time, been engaged in investigating this enigma. A recent collection of essays, Missing Out , explored our…

Along with just about every other aspect of real or imagined differences between the sexes, the idea that your biological sex will determine the sex of your brain—and so your behaviour, aptitudes and personality—has a long and controversial history . The idea that a man’s brain is “male” and a…

Russian President Vladimir Putin used to seem invincible. Today, he and his regime look enervated, confused, and desperate. Increasingly, both Russian and Western commentators suggest that Russia may be on the verge of deep instability , possibly even collapse . This perceptual shift is…

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Nigel Warburton : There’s been a lot of interest in reviving Stoic philosophy recently, particularly the therapeutic aspects of it. I’m skeptical about this, as in my view philosophy is primarily the attempt to understand, and as such is an activity of enquiry. There’s no guarantee that discovering…

Pastāv dažādi nācijas koncepti, un nacionālisms kā ideoloģija ir ļoti dažāds, atšķirīgs, tam ir daudz dažādu versiju, definīciju, dažādas sejas. Gribētu sākt ar septembra beigās portālā Delfi publicētu raksta fragmentu, kura autors ir Kārlis Langīns, un šī raksta nosaukums ir Slinkot, pūt un nīst ir…

I had been travelling around the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca in Mexico for months, talking to returned migrants – men who spent decades in laundromats in Los Angeles or shovelling snow off the highways of Indianapolis or serving burritos to the paunchy Republicans of Cincinnati – before I wound up in the…

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When Memoirs of Hadrian was published in 1951 it included a postscript in which its author, Marguerite Yourcenar, explained why she had fixed on the 2nd century AD as the setting for her novel. “Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in…

Oliver Munday [On this week’s Inside The New York Times Book Review podcast , Tom Bissell and the editor Michael Pietsch discuss “Infinite Jest.”] Something happens to a novel as it ages, but what? It doesn’t ripen or deepen in the manner of cheese and wine, and it doesn’t fall apart, at least not…