New on Substack, Jon Baskin on Knausgaard, Dostoevsky, David Foster Wallace’s call for “morally passionate, passionately moral fiction”... and how it all relates to the Harper’s essay on gooning.

New on Substack, Jon Baskin and Mike Lipkin continue our series of conversations on graduate education by asking: What does it mean to say humanistic scholars “produce knowledge” in the first place? And is it important to ask what this knowledge is “for”?

New online, Michael Barron on the personal achievement at the heart of Michael Lentz’s “Schattenfroh”:

New online: Robert Pippin, @agcallard.bsky.social, Ben Jeffery, Rory O’Connell, Laura Baudot, Thomas Bartscherer, Jonny Thakkar, Jon Baskin, Leon Wieseltier and J.M. Coetzee remember Jonathan Lear.

New online, Barry Schwabsky on a new translation of “The Flowers of Evil,” and finding a Baudelaire for our time:

New on Forms of Life, Noah Swank on the political trap of AI-generated MAGA art:

Lillian Fishman on the Fitzcarraldo classes’ fear of porn. Really very good. ‘It’s a commonplace that all the best things in life arrive at the edge of hurt, as a result of risk.’ (Love, for one.) ‘Why do we think sex is the exception?’ thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

New online, @saffron.bsky.social on what it means to measure intelligence, in large language models and in us:

New on our Substack, an @interintellect.bsky.social conversation between Jennifer Frey and Anastasia Berg on whether the fight for liberal education can be anything but a losing battle:

“'Higher' education shouldn’t be higher just in its cost or in years—like it’s your thirteenth or fourteenth year of school. No, we should be thinking in terms of your highest aspirations as a human person." - Jennifer Frey over at @thepointmag.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/thepoint...

New on Forms of Life, a dispatch from the first Charlie Kirk memorial in Latin America:

From the archive, Peter Marshall on this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, László Krasznahorkai, and his artistic evolution from apocalyptic tragicomedy to calm reconciliation:

New on Forms of Life, Jennie Lightweis-Goff on Charlie Kirk, William Buckley, and what happens when campus culture wars hit Southern universities:

On today’s episode of Selected Novels, Zach Fine and Jess Swoboda talk to Eliza Barry Callahan about Fleur Jaeggy’s “Sweet Days of Discipline”:

New on Forms of Life, Clement Gelly on Bolsonaro’s conviction, Trump’s authoritarianism, and what it’s like to keep up with U.S. news through a Brazilian lens:

New online, @perioikos.bsky.social on Greg Grandin’s “America, América” and the difference between a moral and a moralizing history:

On absorption vs theatricality - an interesting read thepointmag.com/criticism/a-...

Psyched and grateful that @thepointmag.bsky.social published my essay on reading Houellebecq through the lens of theatricality and absorption from Michael Fried. Check it out there thepointmag.com/criticism/a-...

How does Houellebecq achieve his remarkable thriller/anti-thriller effect in his most recent novel, “Annihilation”? The art historian Michael Fried’s writing on absorption and theatricality holds the key, Daniel Silver writes:

New on Forms of Life, Oliver Eagan on Charlie Kirk and what it will take to respond to “post-political” acts of violence:

In other news, this critical essay on "Zone of Interest" by @garthgreenwell.bsky.social is both beautiful and provocative. Doing some lesson prep for my screening of ZoI next week and happened upon it. thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

New on Forms of Life, Becky Zhang on her late-breaking summer fling: New York’s public swimming pools.

New on our Substack, two interviews with Graham Liddell and Yousri Alghoul about Liddell’s translation of Alghoul’s issue 35 story “A Letter to Vania,” how their collaboration came out, and why writing is an act of madness:

From vicarious wars to remote wars -- to democratizing war? Great essay by David Bromwich via @thepointmag.bsky.social: thepointmag.com/politics/the...

New on Forms of Life, Maria Gomberg on why exhaustively AI-proofed syllabi won’t solve the problem of AI use in college classes:

Midwestern readers, take note: we’ll be at our local book fair, Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest, all weekend, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Find us at the Small Press Tent (Booth GG)! Details here:

If you like extremely overlooked works of mid century literature and podcasts oh boy have I got a link for you—

Thought I'd share this on David Brion Davis, the historian of slavery and abolition, whose life's work was shaped by his experience as a US military policeman in occupied post-war Germany. Seems pertinent in many ways right now. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

On today’s new episode of Selected Novels, Zach Fine and Jess Swoboda talk to @catherinelacey.bsky.social about Evan S. Connell’s “Mrs. Bridge”—at once a comic satire and a tender, sympathetic treatment of the mid-century American housewife, written in a style all its own.

Two weeks from now we’re throwing an issue 35 release party in New York! Details + RSVP here:

New on Forms of Life, Joey Keegin on the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort and what New Orleans has to show for it, twenty years later:

New online, Steve Larkin on the agony and the ecstasy of college football:

Mary Gaitskill is one of the few writers who effectively interrogates the nature of evil and the uglier sides of our internal lives. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

Unusual applications/sources of philosophy make for great reading. Case in point:

New online, an online supplement to our “What is violence for?” symposium: Gordon Marino on boxing and the good life.

New on our Substack: a conversation with our issue 35 cover photographer, and some behind-the-scenes info about how we find our covers.

Becca Rothfeld on DC’s crime stats vs. “ambient social disorder”: “framing an allergy to empiricism as proof of spiritual profundity” thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

Our Top 5: • Mapping the scars (@slate.com) • A parent, twice met (@newyorker.com) • Paradise in peril (@thedialmag.bsky.social) • Hallucinating war @thepointmag.bsky.social) • Wriggly business (@thelocal.to) longreads.com/2025/08/15/t...

New on Forms of Life, Becca Rothfeld on facts, feelings, and the National Guard’s restoration of the peace in Washington, D.C.:

“Because Christian pacifism is eschatological, it doesn’t offer a universal ethic. Rather, it’s a way of life for those who desire to belong to the story that begins in Eden and culminates with the peaceable kingdom.” —Peter Mommsen, @thepointmag.bsky.social

On “an alignment with a force of destruction that briefly exalts those who become its conduit” thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

"Both my grandfathers would have infuriated George Orwell." Thank you to #PeterMommsen for explaining why violence is not our default mode in @thepointmag.bsky.social thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

Great piece on Kierkegaard, the military, and “the peace anxiety that possesses young soldiers as they stand astride the gap between the garrison and wider society.” @thepointmag.bsky.social thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

“The line everyone knows is that he tried to kill the president because he wanted to impress Jodie Foster. That phrase is repeated in all the stories about him, those exact words: impress Jodie Foster.” thepointmag.com/politics/ame...

Issue 35—devoted entirely to the question “What is violence for?”—is now online! Read it all here: thepointmag.com/issue/issue-35/

I wrote about Sorry, Baby, Materialists, and our current climate of sexual politics for @thepointmag.bsky.social! thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

New on Forms of Life, @apockros.bsky.social on what “Sorry, Baby” understands about our current climate of sexual politics that “Materialists” doesn’t:

This month on our podcast, Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine return to Selected Essays to talk to @ellenws.bsky.social about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s essay “My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion”: thepointmag.buzzsprout.com/1791285/epis...

New online, James Duesterberg talks to Quinn Slobodian about his new book, “Hayek’s Bastards,” and the politics of neoliberalism beyond economics:

Issue 35—which is dedicated entirely to the question of violence—is coming soon. Check out the annotated table of contents for an extended preview: