Books & Art

Paul Cantor explains how Mary Shelley’s monster tramples all over the supposed line between high culture and pop culture.

A review of The Dawn Prayer, by Matthew Schrier.

Also: The limits of human endurance, tulips, and more.

Also: What do copy editors do, and what’s the point of elevator music?

Two new books give him credit where it isn't due.

Also: The Freud fraud, the family affair of Icelandic fiction, and more.

Also: How Oscar Hammerstein transformed Broadway, what 200,000 stars look like, and more.

Also: Henry Kissinger on the dangers of AI, the myth of the mad genius, and more.

Also: Thomas Cole’s conservative conservationism, and more.

Also: Romian Gary’s idealism, a self-centered guide to writing poetry, and more.

Also: Why the The Seagull is so hard to adapt, a life of Enzo Ferrari, and more.

Also: The diversions of Dollywood, Anthony Burgess’s unpublished essays, and more.

Also: The misleading New York Times best-seller list, and more.

Also: An altered memoir of a kidnapped Jewish boy, addiction in early modern England, and more.

Although he is best known for his landscapes, there is a power and tense stillness in Paul Cézanne’s depictions of his family, neighbors, and friends.

Vice President Mike Pence’s daughter Charlotte wrote—and his wife, Karen, illustrated—a children’s book about the family bunny Marlon Bundo. It’s not Beatrix Potter or Watership Down. But it’s on time for the Easter theme, charmingly illustrated, and needless to say well-intentioned. Who doesn’t…

Ursula K. Le Guin, who died on January 22 at the age of 88, lived most of her adult life in Portland, Oregon, where she and her husband Charles—who taught French at the local university—quietly brought up their three children. I suspect that Le Guin, who herself majored in French at Radcliffe, must…

It’s Virginia Woolf’s 136th birthday, meaning she’s had plenty of time to finish her description of the child orbiting the lake by foot and how it brings to mind the circular nature of life. After all, the kid made it just five steps, and it was a century ago.

In recent years, John McPhee’s writing has become more retrospective, a natural sensibility for a man now 86 years old. A case in point was his 2010 book Silk Parachute, a collection of essays and reportage that also stood out for its uncharacteristically personal tone. From the title essay, a…

Elliott Green's "Human Nature" is one of the early hits of the 2017 art scene. Showing at the Pierogi Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (it closes March 26), Green's show won praise from critics across the spectrum, including the New York Times, and the more specialized art press. His…