What makes things interesting to the reader? It depends on the quality of writing and perception—which, I suppose, is what ...

It’s a good time to investigate the paradoxes and special strangeness of Andy Kaufman and Paul Reubens, oddly alike in some ...

Casting Miss World 1994 as the second-prettiest sister would make the metaphysics of their romance totally unrecognizable ...

In 1929, after a nine-year silence, Fernando Pessoa renewed his correspondence with Ophelia Queiroz, with whom he had enjoyed the only romance of his life. Where his earlier letters, from 1920, found ...

Have all been fought and won. In a very short time, now. This war will be done. So I order my men. Children, actually, and far from home. To fight and die for nothing. We don't want no more of your ...

But Goshen was not an attempt at charity. It was, according to my parents’ interpretation of scripture, a tangible ...

Remember where I came from. Think of a continent of sabled czars. Leave your home. Let exile fill your mouth like the lost language of the child. Understand the reason. A man who would not wear the ...

Emma has been called a detective novel, and with good reason: the fun of first reading it consists largely in scrutinizing ...

June, 1923: The French paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin was traveling on mule back in the vastness beyond the Great Wall, west of Peking. He saw it from a distance: the Ordos, the inner Mongolian ...

In December 1903, Thomas Mann wrote his older brother, Heinrich, a long letter reviewing the latter’s novel—with brutal candor. Some of the most scathing bits are below. The complete missive is in The ...

When I got off the plane in Taipei on my way to Hong Kong, I did not expect to see anyone I knew. I had asked the Chus not to meet me, knowing they were busy just then. But it was possible that they ...

I have been a stalwart advocate for the legacy of Charles White. I have said it so often, it could go without saying. I have always believed that his work should be seen wherever great pictures are ...