The wolves behind the fence at the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, were lithe and rangy. They weren’t big. They didn’t slaver. They trotted up and down as our human guide told us charming tales of wolf-ambassadors, wild creatures who trusted their handlers enough to come out . . . . Continue Reading »
After a teaching career of fifty years, I agree with E. D. Hirsch that the primary problem in American public education is not the high schools, but the poorly organized, ineffective elementary school curricula, including the idiotic books of childish fiction. Continue Reading »
For reasons I haven’t been able to figure out, friendship—deep, genuine friendship—gets short shrift in contemporary fiction. The Chet & Bernie books are wonderful exceptions, and I am immensely grateful for them. Continue Reading »
The resurgent nationalisms of recent decades have been one response to the homogenizing impulses of globalization—but nation is not the solution to homelessness in Eugene Vodolazkin’s Brisbane.Continue Reading »
Twenty years after publishing his first novel—years he spent establishing himself, in incisive, often fearsome essays and reviews and nonfiction books, as a leading literary–cultural critic—Pankaj Mishra had a Damascene moment of sorts. He describes it in a recent essay for . . . . Continue Reading »
Style is the intellect in flight: A thought can only really travel when it has the equilibrium, speed, and structure to get off the ground. Continue Reading »
Even after Orwell explicitly diverged from some of Chesterton’s views in the 1930s, under the influence of socialist ideas and hopes, Chesterton’s assumptions and political and ethical conceptions continued to shape him. Continue Reading »