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Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers?

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Being a parent raises so many urgent, concrete questions—Will this movie cause nightmares? Is this enough sunscreen? Where are the Cheez-Its?—that the abstract ones often slip beneath the surface, only to…

Proud and Impassioned, Biden Passes the Torch

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story For years, Joe Biden has told fellow-politicians, with rueful wisdom, “You’re either on the way up or you’re on the way down.” But after making the rarest choice in politics, he…

How Gena Rowlands Redefined the Art of Movie Acting

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Gena Rowlands, who died last Wednesday, at the age of ninety-four, is, of all the actresses I’ve ever seen onscreen, the greatest artist. She’s the one whose performances offer the most…

Barry Blitt’s “Roller Coaster”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The past several weeks have been a political roller coaster. Former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, named J. D. Vance as his running mate, and staged a triumphant Republican…

The Trouble with Friends

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story On a daily basis, I teach kids. By kids, I mean teens to college-age, sometimes mid-twenties. When I started teaching, I was still a kid myself, so I was careful to…

The Outback Observed, and Transformed

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story How do you reacquaint yourself with the country you’re from? Until he was twelve, the photographer Adam Ferguson lived in Dubbo, Australia, a small city about five hours’ drive from Sydney.…

Jacques Rozier’s Inspired Improvisations

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story It’s a Francophile summer in New York, with a major Claire Denis rediscovery and a Jean-Pierre Melville retrospective already in the books and an Agnès Varda-centric series under way, but the…