Culture & Religion

Frank Kermode tries to suss out what Eliot meant by having “a shudder” while reading, a standard by which Eliot defined good poetry and prose, such as in Tennyson’s In Memoriam.

Today, we’re doing something a bit different. Instead of focusing on a specific design-for-good product or idea, let’s focus on why it’s important to talk about these products and ideas […]

The New York Times has introduced a new blog, on philosophy. It’s called Stone. The first piece/post is written by the very elegant and, philosophically, compelling Simon Critchley, and addresses […]

Jasper John’s (American) “Flag” sold for a record price in New York with other American artists taking top dollar in a reversal of a trend that has favored international artists.

Dramatist Friedrick Schiller and the late David Foster Wallace both wanted to lift their audience up instead of write down to them; their opinions are excerpted in Lapham’s Quarterly.

Psychologists are finding humans have an innate tilt towards what they call “egalitarian motives” or “inequity aversion” — we’re all Robin Hoods at heart.

Facing rising tuition rates, a growing number of economists and educators think more vocational training could help American students to find gainful employment.

“Here we are now,” Kurt Cobain intoned in 1991 on Nirvana’s Nevermind album, “entertain us.” With that catch phrase, the entire genre of grunge rock launched itself into the cultural […]

“To support growth in the next decade, we need to nourish our walkable urban spaces and neighborhoods” with accessible public transport and quality infrastructure, writes the Atlantic.

While raising a child should be done with love and care, we need not think a few bad “formative years” dooms someone to a dysfunctional or psychologically tormented life.

When we think things out, it is usually on paper. Writers scribble random thoughts on scraps near at hand and mine those jotted flashes of insight later for fuller, more […]

Summertime is generally considered the height of festival season. That means everything from multi-artist concertpaloozas to glossy film festivals to avant-garde art installations. As artists and performers from around the […]

Carol Friedman always meets with her subjects before she photographs them. If she doesn’t, “then they’re just going to the dentist and they’re filled with fear.” But does the veteran […]

There is a “peculiarly Japanese profession—part-private investigator, part-prostitute—whose function is the direct opposite of a dating agency: they break apart human relationships.

Several courageous Muslim feminists are challenging conservative male interpretations of Islam. “These women are quietly working within the culture, rather than against it.”

“Raw milk is one of those issues that riles people,” writes Corby Kummer. He looks at legislation in Massachusetts requiring that unpasteurized milk be bought directly from farms.

 “Every generation is born to this same anatomical legacy; how they then fashion it with clothing is, in miniature, the story of culture,” argues Susan J. Vincent in her sweeping […]

The tea party movement has become “an insta-network for ambitious women,” writes Hanna Rosin. “Some would surprise you with their straightforward feminist rage.”

“Nowadays a specimen of unkempt, puffed-up prose or stumbling, lugubrious verse doesn’t even need to make it past an editor or publisher to glide slimily” into our awareness, writes Laura Miller.

Long before reality television challenged our faith in the sustainability of the human race, documentary films were an intriguing look into the minds and hearts of some fascinating subjects. By […]

In the wake of the housing bust, some squatters are doing so not for financial expediency, but because they reject the idea that homes be treated as commodities.

While Matt Gross writes a column called the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times, it doesn’t mean he keeps to a strict budget when he’s on the road. To […]

Are certain elements of music hard-wired into our brains? If there are universals in how we perceive music and respond to it, our musical sense might have some adaptive value.

Nathaniel Rich writes that Ray Bradbury’s best stories are “have a strange familiarity about them. They’re like long-forgotten acquaintances—you know you’ve met them somewhere before.”

The word genius tends to get thrown around pretty liberally these days, especially when everyone from Bob Dylan to Mike Myers has been tagged with the superlative.  But in an […]

“Globish” is a highly simplified form of English, without grammar or structure—but perfectly comprehensible. Robert McCrum writes that it is the language that unites us.

“You can fight fire with fire,” says Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune who is bothered by an overly reactive American culture, “As a rule, though, it’s better to use water.”

The Guardian reports that unaccountable Middle Eastern governments limit freedom of the press by creating threats real and imaginary to justify their habit of censorship.

David Brooks’s meditation on “dual-conscious” thinking in yesterday’s Times is an excellent piece leading into Mother’s Day tomorrow. Mothers are natural dual-thinkers; it is a mother’s work, perhaps uniquely, to […]

Raymond Carver was deeply bothered by the fame his stories brought him because his editor, Gordon Lish, had written such dramatic improvements to them.