Discussed in this essay: Collected Works, by Charles Portis. Library of America. 1,105 pages. $45. N ot long before Charles Portis visited Buckingham Palace in the summer of 1964, having secured a ...

Notes on the alleged decline of readingS ome people lament the disappearance of the spotted owl from our forests; others sport bumper stickers boasting that they eat fried spotted owls. It appears ...

Notes on humiliationT he first time I understood humiliation as world-destroying was the morning I watched the World Trade Center evaporate from a street corner in Greenwich Village and found myself ...

The ecstatic cult of Nicolas CageDiscussed in this essay: Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career, by Keith Phipps. Henry Holt. 288 pages. $27.99. L ast fall, hoping to draw ...

Against “relevance” in artB ecause these battles are still being fought, I hesitate to articulate the ways in which I think our use of the word “relevant” is distorting our appraisals of art. But I ...

A life without foodT he last time I ate real food, actually chewed and swallowed, was six years ago. During those final meals, I ordered a pastrami sandwich, a pork-belly bun, and vegetable soup. The ...

Discussed in this essay: Warhol, by Blake Gopnik. Ecco. 976 pages. $45. One thing I miss is the time when America had big dreams about the future. Now it seems like nobody has big hopes for the future ...

How forests adapt to climate changeN inety minutes west of Boston, up the road from a Benedictine monastery, lies what is perhaps the most studied forest on Earth. Since 1907, when the first of these ...

I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended ...

On Annie Ernaux’s spectacular impersonalityDiscussed in this essay: A Girl’s Story, by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer. Seven Stories Press. 160 pages. $18.95. A Man’s Place, by Annie ...

Discussed in this essay: Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land, by Robert Crawford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 512 pages. $35. Eliot After The Waste Land, by Robert Crawford. Farrar, Straus ...

Listen to an audio version of this article. D oes anyone believe in college education anymore? Republicans certainly don’t—a mere 19 percent of them expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of ...