Culture

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story What do we lose when we lose a pianist? The question is on my mind today, the anniversary of the death of the German pianist and conductor Lars Vogt, who succumbed…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story When I heard on Saturday that Jimmy Buffett had died, I wrote a condolence e-mail to his longtime friend Thomas McGuane, the novelist. McGuane, who is married to Buffett’s sister Laurie,…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story After dementia came for my father—after he could no longer read, after he had lost his table manners, after he had started to run his fingers through his hair, as though…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), who is best known for his celebration of the American vernacular, was thrilled when I first contacted him for a New Yorker cover, back in 2002. “When he’d…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Tessa Hadley recently published her thirtieth short story in The New Yorker—the first, “Lost and Found,” came out in 2002—and also, earlier in the summer, put out her twelfth book of…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Traffic can be a nuisance on the streets of any city. In Lagos, it organizes daily life—for schoolchildren, for office employees, and for the scores of informal workers who sell beverages…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Contemporary discourse has little patience with maddening contradictions of the kind that Wagner embodies.Photograph from brandstaetter images / Getty “Wagner calls off threat to march on Russia capital” was the disorienting…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood novel, “The Last Tycoon,” is an admiring roman à clef about the visionary studio boss Irving Thalberg, who, in his early twenties, had more or less invented…