In academic literature, a “sleeping beauty” is a research paper that was neglected when it was first published but found relevance later. Pop icon and author Byrne (How Music Works, 2012, etc.) expands the concept by looking for examples not just in science but in literature, music, technology, economics, and more. Read more
Month: October 2026
The Final Masterpiece by James Sallis, Author of the Cult Classic ‘Drive’
Reading James Sallis is like reading poetry, or having a dream that is vivid and tactile but yet somehow elusive. That’s the feeling evoked in his last, posthumous novel, Backwater. Though it is ostensibly a police procedural set in a small southern community – a backwater – it is really a series of ruminations about life, death, and music from the perspective of the narrator, a retired cop turned jazz musician named Bishop. Read more
On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
He was a deeply disturbed man who, Ogden argues, made art not to teach or shape the reader, but to connect with all that was disturbing in us, too. Poe lurched toward the “darkness” and perversity the rest of us shrink from, for no other reason than to bring us within reach of the sublime. Read more
New Adaptation of ‘East of Eden’ Premieres October 1 on Netflix
In the farmlands of the Salinas Valley in California, successive generations of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, are destined to reenact the fateful story of Cain and Abel. Watch trailer
