Culture

Culture

Skip Navigation

writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai stands behind a brick wall

Alex Shephard, Mark Krotov

The Nobel Prize in Literature Is Boring Now

László Krasznahorkai, who was awarded the prize on Thursday, is a brilliant novelist and consummate laureate. But has the Swedish Academy lost its sense of fun?

Wire surrounds Marcy Correctional Facility state prison on in Marcy, N.Y.

What Happens When the True Crime Story Is Over?

John J. Lennon’s book, written in his twenty-fourth year in prison, provides a bracing reckoning with guilt, remorse, and the possibility of change.

The Spiritual Appeal of Elizabeth Gilbert

An illustration of author Elizabeth Gilbert in the clouds

The Spiritual Appeal of Elizabeth Gilbert

Books & the Arts

A collage of documents from the founding of the United States

Can America Become a Democracy?

What it would take for the United States to live up to the promise of its founding

An illustration that imagines some of the scenes from Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Shadow Ticket

Thomas Pynchon’s Strangely Stripped-Back Noir

Shadow Ticket may be an exercise in restraint. But what is a Pynchon novel without its sense of unruly bigness?