Lea Carpenter
Lea Carpenter was a Founding Editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope. She graduated from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard. Her Harvard University Commencement Address, “Auden and The Little Things,” was about the need for poetry in our lives. She lives in New York with her husband and son where she produces programming for the New York Public Library. She formerly wrote the Think, See, Feel blog for BigThink.
While most of the world waits to hear who will take home which Oscars, some of us might be as content to watch playwright Martin McDonagh ascend a separate stage, […]
Jason Epstein thought of Amazon before Jeff Bezos. Or at least, he understood the concept: the necessity, and power, of making the world’s backlist available at all times. Epstein’s uniquely […]
Randy Kennedy’s “The Free-Appropriation Writer,” in today’s New York Times Week in Review, considers the ever-sensitive spectrum of borrowing (said another way, flattery; said another way, plagiarism) that has historically […]
Vanity Fair’sPresidential Profiles, edited by Graydon Carter, is a jewel. Or, a jewel-box: a tiny, elegantly conceived, and ruthlessly crafted jewel-box of a book. It will make you wish you’d […]
In his piece in this week’s New Yorker on depression, and depression-related research, Louis Menand asks, “Is psychopharmacology evil, or is it useless?” Increasingly, skeptics say it’s the latter, and […]
Tiger’s statement recalled the words of Saint Augustine, who said, “Make me chaste—but not yet.” There is something about society’s axiomatic forgiveness in the face of apology (especially when religion […]
N+1 editor Charles Petersen’s piece in the new New York Review of Books compares Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to legendary city planner Robert Moses. Do we agree? Can we concede […]
While it’s not quite Norman Mailer on Liston v. Patterson, Gawker’s analysis of New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier’s recent exchange with Andrew Sullivan makes for brilliant reading, a smart companion to the […]
The rest simply cannot be controlled. Yet apropos of Valentine’s Day, it’s worth considering something The Daily Beast reported recently, a remark made by philanthropist (and Edwards supporter) Bunny Mellon regarding John […]
It turns out they knew exactly what they were doing. The Grateful Dead became the most successful band of all time not by making their work scarce, but by making […]
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told Charlie Rose last night that, when faced with a uniquely challenging moment in the early days of the financial crisis, he did what many […]
Each January, an observer in Davos will find a small, well-selected set of men and women taking refuge from the world to try to come to terms with its problems. […]
No one writes like this. It’s crazy. No one will ever write like this again. Here are the opening paragraphs of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; the Zen story […]
If her piece on loss and mourning in this week’s New Yorker is evidence, Meghan’s O’Rourke’s next book may be the most powerful reflection on the topic since The Year […]
Simon Schama’s piece on the relationship of objects to history in the Weekend FT reminds us of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God. This was the artist’s outrageous/brilliant/bullshit/prescient/profitable/pathetic/gorgeous/obscene (depending) diamond-encrusted […]
There is almost always something sexy in her columns. The feminists, and post-feminists, forgive her for that, as every woman seems to read her. Today, the something sexy is San […]
King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in April 1963, almost five years, to the day, before his assassination. The letter remains resonant for its poetry (“injustice anywhere is a […]
It is true: Eat, Pray, Love was not for everyone—although it was for many, many people, over five million people—mainly women. Women went so mad for the novel they not […]
It was Andy Warhol who said “sex is the biggest nothing of all time,” and whether his coy abstinence is worth comparing to the young novelists analyzed in Katie Roiphe’s […]
If we cannot rely on our classic economic models to make in-depth, investigative journalism—and, in particular, foreign reporting—possible, what can be done? Are there models in other countries of gathering […]
Katie Roiphe’s cover essay in today’s New York Times Book Review affectionately notes one thing about several male novelists of an earlier generation—Roth, Bellow, Updike—that we should consider missing: unapologetic, […]
Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin has been praised as one of the finest novels of the year—one of the finest books, full stop. Tina Brown loved it. Jonathan […]
The Economist’s Christmas Issue one-act, “Gordon Rex,” might be funny or—in that uniquely English, Economist-y way—slightly self-consciously aloof, but it makes us long for more. More Brown in verse. More […]
This is a common time of year for Lists. Everyone seems to have one. David Brooks’s Best Essays List ran in today’s New York Times, and almost every other literary publication […]
Let us now praise Sir Harry Evans. Why not? We thought we knew him, but now we know so much more. Memoir is best when performed by those who did […]
Of course he does. And West’s passion for the things he loves is uniquely infectious. When he tells us what he thinks—about anything, from the history of jazz to Obama’s […]
Who needs proper porn when one can read Chaucer? Both might make us feel good in diverse ways, but assumptions that the afterglow of old poetry is uniquely cerebral are […]
Textbooks–and perhaps, uniquely, economics textbooks–are not known for their literary brilliance. Why should they be? Does math need metaphor? In college when we think about numbers we think about things […]
There have been myriad memorable speeches, and memorable lines, from our current President, but perhaps today’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech will be remembered as his finest. Its lyricism was notable, […]
Why should anyone care about Gossip Girl? Perhaps because it’s an excellent escape from the depth and complexity of the Messy Rest of the World. Perhaps because the kids are […]