William Deresiewicz

William Deresiewicz (bill at thenation.com) is a Nation contributing writer. He was nominated for a 2009 National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.

Currently

  • The Origin of the Specious

    June 24, 2009 Subscribe

  • Adaptation

    May 20, 2009

    If art is a product of the mind, and the mind a product of evolution, is art a product of evolution?

  • Exchange

    May 20, 2009 Subscribe

  • When the Whip Comes Down

    April 22, 2009

    With Don't Cry, a disabling self-consciousness has crept into Mary Gaitskill's fiction.

  • Lab Test

    February 25, 2009

    Does the profit motive distort and degrade the unpredictable path of scientific discovery?

2008

  • Letters

    December 17, 2008 Subscribe

  • How Wood Works

    November 19, 2008

    James Wood may be the best literary critic we have, but the status he enjoys reveals just how far we have fallen.

  • Seeing Past the Ivy

    October 21, 2008

    Why the commentariat's response to hand-wringing about "the decline of reading" condescends to the large mass of nonspecialist readers.

  • Homing Patterns

    September 24, 2008

    Marilynne Robinson's new novel explores faith, loneliness and the national passion play of race.

  • Meetings, Purchases, Pleasures

    August 27, 2008

    Salman Rushdie probes the limits of the imagination to produce his most coherent and readable novel.

  • Dead Letters

    May 22, 2008

    Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig saw himself as a Freud of fiction--a fellow spelunker in the caverns of the heart.

  • Professing Literature in 2008

    March 11, 2008

    Why is the intellectual agenda of English departments being set by teenagers?

  • Foes

    February 7, 2008

    J.M. Coetzee, now out with a new novel and a collection of essays, reminds us what a master he is at turning life into narrative.

2007

  • Fukú Americanus

    November 8, 2007

    Junot Díaz's masterful new novel maps the ambiguities in the modern immigrant experience in America.

  • The Imaginary Jew

    May 10, 2007

    Two new novels, by Michael Chabon and Nathan Englander, recharge the modern Jewish experience with a sense of the exotic.

  • Cafe Society

    April 26, 2007

    Clive James's erudite new collection of essays celebrates the best of twentieth-century art, thought and politics.

  • The Book of Questions

    February 6, 2007

    In a book-length essay on the novel, Milan Kundera foresees the curtain of literary history drawing to a close.

2006

  • Awesome Powers

    November 21, 2006 Subscribe

  • Representative Fictions

    November 16, 2006

    An ambitious two-volume history of the novel explores its evolution across continents and centuries.

  • Science Fiction

    September 20, 2006

    Richard Powers's The Echo Maker speaks volumes about neuroscience, nature and environmental degradation. But it says little about what it means to be alive.

  • Dead Man

    May 11, 2006

    Philip Roth's Everyman is a contemporary morality play that explores the author's obsessions with health and virility, ecstasy and betrayal, and the certainty and solitude of death.

2005

  • Zadie Smith's Indecision

    September 15, 2005

    It can't be easy to rein in a writer as successful as Zadie Smith. Her new novel, On Beauty, proves it's almost impossible.

  • It's a Man's, Man's World

    August 25, 2005

    Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men seems designed as a calculated assault on the reader.

2004

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Blogs

» The Beat

Jobless Figures Pose Social, Political Threat for Obama, Dems | The president and his aides are failing to focus enough attention on the most serious economic issue. Democrats could pay the penalty in 2010.
John Nichols
17 Comments
Posted at 1:27 PM ET

» Act Now!

Defining Patriotism | What do you value in the traditions of your country?
Peter Rothberg
50 Comments

» Editor's Cut

Rediscovering Secular America | This Fourth of July those who identify themselves as non-believers have much cause for celebration.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
73 Comments

» The Notion

Celebrating the Fourth by Remembering the Fifth | On Independence Day, the forgotten and imperiled Fifth Amendment bears honoring.
Eyal Press
39 Comments

» Altercation

Mikey 'n' Me | I got closer to Michael Jackson than almost anyone, or at least closer than most people of the age of consent.
Eric Alterman

» Capitolism

Washington: Even More Corrupt Than You Thought! | Washington Post sells access to lobbyists.
Christopher Hayes
68 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Whisky Tango Foxtrot? | General Jones tells the generals in Kabul: don't bother asking for more troops.
Robert Dreyfuss
65 Comments