World
How “The Great Gatsby” Took Over High School
In the spring of 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was worried about “The Great Gatsby.” It had been fifteen years since the novel was published, and the author had little...
Why Even Try if You Have A.I.?
A couple of years ago, my wife bought my then four-year-old son a supercool set of wooden ramps, which could be combined with our furniture to create courses through...
For Watchers of “The Clock,” Time Is Running Out
“The Clock,” the addictive film masterpiece by the Swiss artist Christian Marclay, has been showing continually at MOMA since November, and some of us have become transfixed Clockwatchers, returning...
The Return of “My Favorite Season,” a Great Modern Melodrama
Melodrama isn’t central to modern French cinema, because melodrama is rooted in irony, whereas one could hardly slip a playing card between most great French directors’ intentions and results....
The Rise of Megan Moroney, Emo Cowgirl
“I don’t write a whole lot of love songs,” Megan Moroney said last month, onstage at Radio City Music Hall. Fortunately, that’s not exactly true. Almost all her songs...
When Jews Sought the Promised Land in Texas
Ezekiel was an exile. Born in the kingdom of Judah, he survived the siege of Jerusalem, in 597 B.C.E., but afterward was banished with his fellow-Jews to Babylon. While...
The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain
In 1857, Sam stumbled into the job that would shape his identity. Aboard a southbound steamboat—part of some half-baked scheme involving the Amazon River and coca—he met a pilot...
Barry Blitt’s “The First Hundred Days”
President Donald J. Trump began his second term with a hundred-day blitz, as a way to both get revenge on his perceived foes and take the country in an...
Jeremy Jordan Mines “Floyd Collins” for Its Sonic Gems
“The future of writing is the universe within,” the composer and lyricist Adam Guettel told an interviewer, in 2001. It had been five years since the Off Broadway première...
Francis, the TV Pope, Takes His Final Journey
Shortly after Pope Francis died, on Monday, the Vatican released a brief document he had authored in 2022, outlining his last testament: how and where he should be buried,...
