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Cultural Criticism and AnalysisDecember 16, 2019
Toni Morrison’s Revolution in American Literature
As with Pilate, the fierce outsider and moral conscience of Song of Solomon, Morrison never asked for the proverbial seat at the table. Instead, she pulled the entire table over to her side of the room.
Jesse McCarthy
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CultureAugust 8, 2019
Toni Morrison’s Cosmos
Like a new planet, she shifted the flow of gravity in American culture.
Jesse McCarthy
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FictionAugust 24, 2017
Mathias Énard’s Alternative Cosmopolitanism
Ranging across the Mediterranean, his novels map out the intermediate space between East and West.
Jesse McCarthy
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EuropeJune 5, 2017
The Way Forward in France
This week’s legislative elections offer an opportunity to steer President Emmanuel Macron in the direction of justice and away from a moneyed autocracy.
Jesse McCarthy
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Non-fictionNovember 29, 2016
Wideman’s Ghosts
A profound sense of hope and despair haunts John Edgar Wideman’s new work of nonfiction.
Jesse McCarthy
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Books and IdeasNovember 15, 2015
Why Does Ta-Nehisi Coates Say Less Than He Knows?
The journalist’s best-selling memoir offers eloquent testimony to the vulnerability of black life, but it surrenders too much to despair.
Jesse McCarthy
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FictionSeptember 10, 2015
Letters From the September 28–October 5, 2015, Issue
Ishmael Reed on life in the Major League; Scott Walker as Nixon’s protégé…
Our Readers and Jesse McCarthy
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ActivismAugust 13, 2015
The Work of Art in the Age of Spectacular Reproduction
The Internet gives us an unearned relation to the present, and the visual art of JR is perfectly aligned with it.
Jesse McCarthy
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Books and IdeasJuly 30, 2015
Paul Beatty’s Savage Satire
The Sellout takes aim at black middle-class foibles and fantasies.
Jesse McCarthy