Category Culture

Another Trial in New York

The current proceedings in a Manhattan courthouse aren’t the first time the interests have tried to lay low a wealthy populist icon. Photo Credit: The Martha Stewart Show Once upon a time, one of the most famous people in the…

The Indestructible Art of Frank Stella

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Since 1959, when, as a recent Princeton graduate, Frank Stella stunned the art world with big, symmetrical bands of black enamel pin-striped by lines of unpainted canvas, he has belonged to…

The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy…

The English Apple Is Disappearing

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story In June, 1899, Sabine Baring-Gould, an English rector, collector of folk songs, and author of a truly prodigious quantity of prose, was putting the finishing touches on “A Book of the…

The Beautifully Unnerving Gaze of “Evil Does Not Exist”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The Japanese writer and director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi operates in a key of seductively textured realism: present-day stories, crystalline images, unadorned performances, quotidian intimacies. And yet there are moments in his new…

Hilton Als on the Sui-Generis Films of Charles Atlas

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Hilton AlsStaff writer You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. Charlie Atlas…

“The Contestant” Is More Than a Cautionary Tale

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Tomoaki Hamatsu became one of the world’s first reality-TV stars when, as an aspiring comedian in his early twenties, he spent fifteen months naked and alone, surviving on sheer luck. The…

“Challengers” Is Essentially a Well-Shot Commercial

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story “I don’t watch tennis matches,” Luca Guadagnino, the director of “Challengers,” a movie about tennis players, recently said in an interview with Little White Lies, a film magazine. “It’s quite boring…

The Revenge of the Home Page

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Nilay Patel, the editor-in-chief of the digital technology publication The Verge, has lately taken to describing theverge.com as “the last Web site on earth.” It’s kind of a joke—there are, of…

Helen Vendler’s Generous Mind

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Luck and art are clearest in retrospect. I arrived at Harvard as most eighteen-year-olds arrive at Harvard: with a grandiose sense of endeavor and a below-average understanding of the way that…