I wrote about BookTok's embrace of Jacqueline Harpman www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
An Uncompromising Belgian Novelist’s Afterlife as a BookTok Star
Jacqueline Harpman wrote her best-known works in the nineteen-nineties, but her fiction’s elegiac loneliness seems to anticipate our own solitary, screen-bound era.
newyorker.com
Kent Nishimura’s photographs capture the backstage labor that allows the Trump show to go on. www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
The White House Press Corps in the Second Trump Era
Kent Nishimura’s photographs capture the backstage labor that allows the Trump show to go on.
newyorker.com
New books, articles, and shows lament a crisis of connection among American men. But the picture of friendship that emerges can feel romanticized and brittle. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The Lost Art of the Bromance
New books, articles, and shows lament a crisis of connection among American men. But the picture of friendship that emerges can feel romanticized and brittle.
newyorker.com
Maggie O’Farrell’s “Land” delights in the interplay between historical fact and fictional world-building. “Her characters may die of plague or starve in famines, but she appears to be enjoying herself,” Katy Waldman writes. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/XBOKZW
Maggie O’Farrell and the Art of Inventing the Past
Why read historical fiction? A new novel by the author of “Hamnet” offers one answer: because it’s fun.
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
My addition to the Granta/A.I. discourse! (comes with this cool animated illo) www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...
Did a Chatbot Write a Prize-Winning Story? Does It Matter?
A Commonwealth Prize-winning short story appears to have been generated with A.I. The response exposes larger fears about honesty, motivation, and expectation in literary writing.
newyorker.com
A Commonwealth Prize-winning short story appears to have been generated with A.I. The response exposes larger fears about honesty, motivation, and expectation in literary writing. www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...
Did a Chatbot Write a Prize-Winning Story? Does It Matter?
A Commonwealth Prize-winning short story appears to have been generated with A.I. The response exposes larger fears about honesty, motivation, and expectation in literary writing.
newyorker.com
Why read historical fiction? A new novel by the author of “Hamnet” offers one answer: because it’s fun. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Maggie O’Farrell and the Art of Inventing the Past
Why read historical fiction? A new novel by the author of “Hamnet” offers one answer: because it’s fun.
newyorker.com
A new book wages a playful war on the strictures of traditional talk therapy. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Can Psychoanalysis Help You Get the Life You Want?
In a new book, Adam Phillips wages a playful war on the strictures of traditional talk therapy.
newyorker.com
I start at the Atlantic next week, But I got an early start: www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
The Wrecking of the Kennedy Center
America’s Trumpiest arts administrator leaves the institution renamed, nearly closed, and wildly unpopular.
theatlantic.com
Yup! I think, psychoanalyzing my own hatred of AI, that a lot of it stems from an intuition that what people want out of AI (affirmation, therapy, instant gratification) is what they increasingly want (or are being trained to want) out of art and culture bsky.app/profile/alis...
Alissa Wilkinson@alissawilkinson.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe piece about AI in romance novels (which, I mean, has been very widespread, I don’t think this is surprising) has reminded me of this excellent @xwaldie.bsky.social article of a year ago about romantasy that I think about probably weekly at least: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Two new books consider fawning—a trauma response involving ingratiating, people-pleasing behavior—and how we can unlearn it. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
How to Recover from Caring Too Much
If you laugh at unfunny jokes, raise your hand too quickly, or can’t decide on your favorite color, you may be exhibiting a fawn response.
newyorker.com
Greatly enjoyed my colleague @xwaldie.bsky.social's anti-anti-fawning piece; turns out fawning has a great artistic tradition, on stage and screen (as here: two pieces, and a better translation of the full, hair-raising Nietzsche passage: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
Martial Art
newyorker.com
Katy Waldman@xwaldie.bsky.social · 7mo agoContemporary escapism: scroll past "Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act after people in Minneapolis protest ICE shooting a woman in the face," "Trump is risking global catastrophe by kidnapping the leader of Venezuela and menacing NATO," click on "people are mad about autistic Barbie"
Reupping my 2025 Trump Kennedy Center Honors bingo card for no particular reason
omg what an honor! um i'd like to thank the academy, james frey, my parents for ruining my personality (just kidding mom and dad it's not your fault!) lithub.com/the-most-sca...
The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2025
Pans, glorious pans. No end-of-year roundup would be complete without them. Among the books being driven into the woods by pitchfork-wielding villagers this year: Louis C.K.’s masturbatory debut no…
lithub.com
A “take” on (or ode to) Mary McCarthy in last week’s mag www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...
Katy Waldman on Mary McCarthy’s “One Touch of Nature”
A reader trusts the author’s voice instinctively, charmed by its opaline assessments and zinging aperçus. Still, one can quibble.
newyorker.com
Donld Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center has led to a year of embarrassment and chaos for the once venerable art institution. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism
The President was drawn to the institution for its cultural prestige. He and his allies made it radioactive.
newyorker.com
The 48th Kennedy Center Honors was “a tacky, supersized love letter to the center’s self-installed chairman, President Donald Trump,” @xwaldie.bsky.social writes. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism
The President was drawn to the institution for its cultural prestige. He and his allies made it radioactive.
newyorker.com
Happy Solvej Balle day! (Every day the eighteenth) m.youtube.com/watch?v=kRAW...
Happy Valentines Day - OutKast (HD)
YouTube video by Mark Cee
m.youtube.com
Most stories in the time-loop genre build to a moment of escape. “On the Calculation of Volume” imagines a woman making a life inside an infinitely repeating November 18th. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/17/on-the-calculation-of-volume-solvej-balle-book-review
Solvej Balle’s Novels Rewire the Time Loop
Most stories in the genre build to a moment of escape. “On the Calculation of Volume” imagines a woman making a life inside an infinitely repeating November 18th.
newyorker.com
