Reporting
- Personal History
A Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future
Two lives bound into one story by immigration and illness.
- Life and Letters
Did This Writer Actually Know Tennessee Williams?
James Grissom says that he met the playwright and his famous muses, and quoted them extensively in his work. Not everyone believes him.
- Onward and Upward with the Arts
How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Swallowed Hollywood
Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Rudd, and Angela Bassett now disappear into movies whose plots can come down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy.”
- Letter from North Carolina
How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy
Lawyers tried to use the independent-state-legislature theory to sway the outcomes of the 2000 and 2020 elections. What if it were to become the law of the land?
The Critics
- Books
Economists Love Immigration. Why Do So Many Americans Hate It?
In a democracy, a policy appraisal has to contend with political as well as economic consequences.
- Books
The Afterlives of Susan Taubes
Her suicide, on the publication of her first novel, made her an icon of doomed femininity, but rediscovered works are revealing a more complex writer.
- Books
Briefly Noted Book Reviews
“The Wounded World,” “Samuel Barber,” “Commitment,” and “An Honorable Exit.”
- Books
The Perils and Potential of the Runaway Imagination
In “Owlish,” Dorothy Tse’s dreamlike début novel, a lonely professor falls in love with a mechanical ballerina.
- The Current Cinema
Celine Song’s “Past Lives” Is a Calm but Moving Début
This story of childhood friends from Seoul who reunite as adults in New York is less a love story than a meditation on transplantation and transience.
The Talk of the Town
William Finnegan on the resurgence of child labor; Berghain’s principal sorter; a Banksy custodian battle; catchy hooks from Eau Claire; the next pasta puffer.
- Comment
Child Labor Is on the Rise
State legislatures across the country are making it easier to hire minors in low-paid and dangerous jobs.
- Night Life Dept.
Big Bad Berghain Bouncer Shows Brooklyn His Berlin Portraits
Sven Marquardt, the überdoorman of the German techno scene, holds an exhibition/dance party for his Robert Mapplethorpe-inspired photographs.
- Public Works Dept.
Art War! A Vigilante Battles Zabar’s Over a Banksy
An obsessed fan, claiming the grocer wasn’t properly cleaning New York’s last public Banksy, took matters into his own hands. But could he be won over with babka?
- On Tour
The Bon Iver Boys Bob for Bass and Bluegill at the Harlem Meer
The drummer Sean Carey, who schedules his tours around fly-fishing stops, tries out some urban angling in Central Park with his bandmates Zach Hanson and Ben Lester.
- Sketchpad
Other Clothes-on-Food-Fad Ideas
The Pasta Puffer is out! Now it’s all about the Baklava Balaclava and the Burrito Bustier.
Shouts & Murmurs
- Shouts & Murmurs
A Network Executive Writes a Sitcom
FRANKLIN (portly, non-SAG) is foiled by his battle-axe mother-in-law. (Standing ovation from studio audience for the show’s brave pro-management stance.)
Cartoons
Fiction
- Fiction
“Thursday,” by George Saunders
“What a strange, uncomfortable thrill it was, being judged from within by someone not oneself.”
Puzzles & Games Dept.
Poems
- Poems
“The Three Graces”
“Who could care about the probability of love when brought, like us, to this / world under endless darkness?”
- Poems
“Nausicaä”
“Maybe a spark jumped, but there is no name / for the god of fragments—there was just a fire I believed in.”
Goings On About Town
- Movies
Rooftop Films, a New York Mainstay
The outdoor screening series includes “In the Heights,” in Queens, and a première of the post-apocalyptic drama “Biosphere,” at Brooklyn Grange, in Sunset Park.
- Tables for Two
Zara Forest Grill Is Worth the Trip to Staten Island
The restaurant’s big, broad menu includes diner fare but also extensive Turkish offerings, such as gozleme, labneh, Iskender kebab, and spectacular desserts.
