"Human beings transform only when we refuse to cordon ourselves off from each other behind a vulgar individualism." thepointmag.com/politics/eli...

Over at The Point, I went long and deep on Art Bell, proto-podcaster, wizard of the American Weird. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

First published in 1971, the animating question of “Divine Right’s Trip” still feels like an urgent one: In an increasingly networked world, what would it mean to return home, and to forge a literature that was rooted in place?

New online, Tim Leonido on Gurney Norman’s reissued novel of 1960s counterculture, and the alternative it posed to an emerging vision of digital, networked connection:

On today’s new episode of Selected Novels—the last of the season!—Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to Austyn Wohlers about Clarice Lispector’s “Near to the Wild Heart”:

New online, Adam Fleming Petty on why Art Bell might help us understand our experience of podcasting today:

New online, Sarah Hammerschlag on Levinas, Israel, and the risks of forging a Jewish identity out of suffering:

there is something about the nature of Asad’s work which makes this all the more devastating. not only was it impossibly sharp, but it was also deeply committed to using thought and theory to build an emancipatory politics. thepointmag.com/politics/pol...

Notes on Harold Brodkey’s 1992 essay Notes on American Fascism, which was dismissed at the time but now seems prescient. [thepointmag.com]

On today’s new episode of Selected Novels, Zach Fine and Jess Swoboda talk to Maya Binyam about Sam Selvon’s “The Lonely Londoners,” a formative, enlivening novel that changed her conception of what literary prose could be like.

“Horror seems cathartic, or psychically protective—a safe ritual that admits the reality of violence and cruelty while also warding it off, like a ceremonial demon mask.” Mary Gaitskill in an essay that appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of @thepointmag.bsky.social.

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.: