Arts & Culture
The heart of the humanities
In a culture that too often values people simply for their labor, learning for learning’s sake is its own good.
Gods who make worlds
By definition, epic fantasy involves a world with a creator. Tad Williams’s Osten Ard is the best since Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Finding ourselves in a Nigerian war novel
Chigozie Obioma offers a narrative that transcends bullets and politics.
A novel about (not) writing an essay
Rosalind Brown’s debut novel could be understood as a midrash on Montaigne’s metaphor of the mind as runaway horse.
What the theater can do
It’s hard to talk about the transformative power of being onstage without sounding ridiculous. Sing Sing and Ghostlight show us instead.
Djokovic against the gods
Humans crave stories that create order, whether they’re about the supreme being in the universe or the greatest tennis player in history.
The poetic space of the liturgy
What if we suspend our disbelief, collapse our ironic distance, and allow ourselves to go in?