Never in my life have I managed to be unhappy when there was a pool around. I’m a Scorpio, a water sign. It’s a miracle I’ve ever been happy on dry land at all.” We had one of the few homes in Paris ...

West End Girl strikes me as a rather neat, crowd-pleasing, bias-confirming presentation of nonmonogamy that casts male ...

No sooner did Bonaparte withdraw his breath than the soul went out of the new universe. Objects faded the moment that the ...

For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages.

November 14, 2025 – “With her pen, Antonius rebuilds villages and cities, replants crops, observes the weather, curates ...

My death is starting to assume shape in the distance, however hazy. So is the recognition that nearly everything I own will ...

In 1934, Columbia University moved its twenty-two miles of books to the newly built Butler Library. By means of a really long slide. Which actually looks less fun than it sounds, and was much too ...

In anticipation of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, Nathan Gelgud, a correspondent for the Daily, has been posting a regular weekly comic about the writers, artists, and ...

October 26, 2012 – “TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”Daniel Horowitz takes on Poe’s classic 1843 tale of ...

Geoffrey Chaucer “provides our earliest ex. of twitter, verb: of a bird: to utter a succession of light tremulous notes; to chirp continuously.” See this, and his other contributions to language, on ...

Like the holy books, long novels are more often maligned than read. Critics complain that they’re exasperating or impossible or not worth the time. But in the history of my reading life, I’ve ...

On a stretch of rural road not far from my house, there is a small wood where, once a year, for just a few short and cold days, the ground turns a magnificent shade of purple. In a reversal of ...