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Pictures of Life on a Christian Commune
Kate Riley’s ambitious début novel, “Ruth,” opens in 1963, the year that its protagonist, Ruth Scholl, is born into a scrupulously managed Christian commune in Michigan. She grows up...
Local Gems: Cultural Institutions
On the occasion of our third centenary issue—this one culture-themed—we asked our writers to share one of their most treasured cultural institutions, big or small. Whether it’s a beloved...
“Ritu,” by Akhil Sharma
Everyone was looking at us as though they all knew that Ritu had done the work and I had tried to mooch off her. Source link
Racing Mount Pleasant Makes Quiet Emotions Sound Grand
The Frank O’Hara poem “Katy” features seven lines of self-assessing declarations. It is the fifth line that I get the most mileage out of: “I am never quiet, I...
How to Survive Your Song Going Viral on TikTok
If you’ve heard the 2019 hit song “Tek It,” by the New York City-based band Cafuné, there’s a good chance it’s not the version that the group originally created....
Why Embracing Constant Growth Is My Key to Happiness
I’ve come to realize that stagnation is my worst enemy. The thought of looking up two or three years from now and seeing that I’ve been doing the same...
When the Man Tried to Sell Minimalism to the Counterculture
“The Man can’t bust our music,” an advertisement in the underground newspaper Berkeley Barb proclaimed, in November, 1968. The accompanying image showed seven presumed radicals huddled in a jail...
“Eden” Is a Desert-Island Thriller That Despoils Itself
The new movie “Eden” features bursts of foul temper, wild sex, grisly violence, and nihilist ideology—a departure, you might say, for Ron Howard, a director whose cinematic disposition can...
Cindy Sherman’s and Rea Irvin’s Eustace Tilley
For a hundred years of New Yorker history (except once, in 2000, for our seventy-fifth anniversary), our covers have featured drawings, not photographs. For the September 1 & 8,...
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Epiphanies
“Elizabeth Gilbert has a new memoir out.” The mere sentence radiates gentle inspiration—watercolors, billowy pants with elephants printed on them, sparkly truthtelling in a big straw hat. Gilbert had...
How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge
When I was growing up, a critic was a jerk, a crank, a spoilsport. I figured that was the whole idea. My favorite characters on “The Muppet Show” were...