“Philosophy,” Wittgenstein argued in the posthumously published Culture and Value, “ought really to be written only as poetic composition.” In keeping with its author’s sentiment, I’d claim that the Tractatus is less the greatest philosophical work of the 20th century than it is one of the most immaculate volumes of modernist poetry written in the past hundred years. Read more
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Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology. Read more
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Writing didn’t serve the purpose I wanted it to, which was to fix the fundamentally broken relationship between myself and other people. Read more
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We rarely talk about spring books or winter reading. What is it about summer that inspired a whole genre of its own? Read more
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His brilliantly idiosyncratic fiction has travestied everyone from Moses to Lin-Manuel Miranda, and laid a foundation for the freewheeling genre experiments of writers such as Paul Beatty, Victor LaValle, and Colson Whitehead. Yet there’s always been more to Reed than subversion and caricature. Laughter, in his books, unearths legacies suppressed by prejudice, élitism, and mass-media coöptation. Read more
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Women love true crime. While certainly not a universal truth, it’s a generalization that feels apt enough that even SNL has noticed. On February 27, the song spoof “Murder Show,” aired to general acclaim — if the women I follow on Twitter are any indication. As the skit begins, Nick Jonas leaves his girlfriend alone for an evening of unwinding and self care. Bubble baths and sheet masks come to mind. But as soon as he shuts the door behind him, she curls up on the couch, opens Netflix, and breaks into song about the specific delight of watching murder shows. Read more
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A scholar of totalitarianism argues that new laws restricting the discussion of race in American schools have dire precedents in Europe. Read more
He never pretended to greatness, and he made fun of those who did. His fallback, his signature, is always humor. For all his avant-gardism, and occasional difficulty, he is a very funny writer, even a jokey one at times. He’s more entertaining to read, and requires less heavylifting, than many of the postmoderns, and he enjoyed more popular success than just about any of them. Read more
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The hyperbole on book jackets—both the plot summaries and the lists of adulatory adjectives that go with them—have long frustrated authors, but no one would dispute that a good blurb has crucial functions: it’s a chance to hook readers, and can help them situate a new book within a genre or tradition. Read more
Lavie Tidhar Considers the Past, Present, and Future of Jewish Writers in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Read more
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