Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Alex BaraschCulture editor You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. It seems…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), who is best known for his celebration of the American vernacular, was thrilled when I first contacted him for a New Yorker cover, back in 2002. “When he’d…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Tessa Hadley recently published her thirtieth short story in The New Yorker—the first, “Lost and Found,” came out in 2002—and also, earlier in the summer, put out her twelfth book of…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Traffic can be a nuisance on the streets of any city. In Lagos, it organizes daily life—for schoolchildren, for office employees, and for the scores of informal workers who sell beverages…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Contemporary discourse has little patience with maddening contradictions of the kind that Wagner embodies.Photograph from brandstaetter images / Getty “Wagner calls off threat to march on Russia capital” was the disorienting…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood novel, “The Last Tycoon,” is an admiring roman à clef about the visionary studio boss Irving Thalberg, who, in his early twenties, had more or less invented…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story “Jump the fuck up!” Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, instructed the crowd outside the gates of Paramount. Morello, who wore his signature red bandana around his neck,…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story In “Requiem for a Whale,” the decomposing animal becomes a backdrop for selfies, no matter how callous or distasteful the photos may appear to some. The opening shots of “Requiem for…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Laughter and tears are like sneezes, physiological responses without aesthetic substance. That’s why I don’t think less of a comedy that doesn’t make me laugh. What matters is the style with…
