Interviews

The Wrath and the Wanderer: Joel Christensen on Homer, 3,000 Years Later
The Wrath and the Wanderer: Joel Christensen on Homer, 3,000 Years Later
According to the ancient historian Plutarch, Alexander the Great never traveled without a copy of Homer's Iliad. Said to have been annotated by his tutor, Aristotle, the volume reportedly rested... Read more...
Susan Wolfson
The Novel Behind the Monster: Susan Wolfson on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
In June 1816, during a summer so cold and rain-soaked that it would later be called “the year without a summer,” a group of young writers found themselves confined indoors... Read more...
Richard Nemesvari
The Many Versions of Hardy: Richard Nemesvari on Editing a Career
When Tess of the d‘Urbervilles was first serialized in a British magazine in 1891, readers encountered a story quietly stripped of its rougher edges. A scene in which Angel Clare... Read more...
Vicki Mahaffey
The Joy in Joyce: Vicki Mahaffey on Reading James Joyce Differently
On February 2, 1922, James Joyce‘s 40th birthday, a young American bookseller named Sylvia Beach placed the first copies of Ulysses into his hands at her Paris shop, Shakespeare and... Read more...
Alan Strauss-Schom
When the Historian Becomes the Story: A Conversation with Alan Strauss-Schom
Alan Strauss-Schom has devoted himself to resurrecting the lives of others. His biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III, and the great dramas of the Napoleonic era established him as one... Read more...
Francesca Lessa
The Pact That Terrorized a Continent: Francesca Lessa on the Hidden Machinery of Operation Condor
On the morning of September 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier climbed into his car on Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C., and began his commute to work. He was a former Chilean... Read more...
Katherine Bucknell
Coming Into Focus: Katherine Bucknell on the Many Lives of Christopher Isherwood
In January 1939, a young English writer boarded a ship in Southampton bound for New York alongside his friend W. H. Auden, and never really went home again. Christopher Isherwood... Read more...
Richard Polt
The Question Remains: Richard Polt on Thinking, Technology, and the Shadow of Martin Heidegger
Why is there something rather than nothing? It is the oldest question in philosophy, and one that most thinkers eventually set aside and move on from. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) never... Read more...
Aubrey Malone
Between Norma and Marilyn: Aubrey Malone Opens the Final Curtain on Marilyn Monroe
In the early 1950s, a photographer named Eve Arnold arrived on a film set to shoot a young actress between takes and found her sitting alone in a corner, reading.... Read more...
Bread, Bombs, and Memory: Abdalhadi Alijla’s Reckoning with Gaza
Bread, Bombs, and Memory: Abdalhadi Alijla’s Reckoning with Gaza
There is a moment in Fearful in Gaza when Abdalhadi Alijla describes his mother reading stories by candlelight during a power outage, her voice steady, her children gathered close while the... Read more...
James L. W. West III
The Beautiful and Damned (Text): How James L. W. West III is Preserving Fitzgerald’s Legacy
In the spring of 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald took his family to the French Riviera, rented a villa, and wrote The Great Gatsby in a sustained burst of concentration that he... Read more...
Matthew Shipe
Reading Roth, Recklessly: Matthew Shipe on Sex, Politics, and the Literary Legacy of Philip Roth
In 1969, Philip Roth's publisher received a letter from a rabbi in New Jersey demanding that Portnoy's Complaint be withdrawn from sale. It was one of thousands. The novel, narrated by... Read more...
Allan Janik
The Jewish Philosopher Hitler Loved: Allan Janik Untangles the Otto Weininger Paradox
On the morning of October 4, 1903, a twenty-three-year-old Viennese philosopher named Otto Weininger rented a room in the house in Vienna's Schwarzspanierstrasse where Ludwig van Beethoven had died, and... Read more...
Calculated Risks: Cheryl Misak on the Life and Mind of Frank Ramsey
Calculated Risks: Cheryl Misak on the Life and Mind of Frank Ramsey
In January 1930, a 26-year-old Cambridge don was admitted to Guy's Hospital in London following complications from jaundice and died within weeks of an operation whose exact nature has never... Read more...
Catching the Butterfly: Dana Dragunoiu on the Elusive Vladimir Nabokov
Catching the Butterfly: Dana Dragunoiu on the Elusive Vladimir Nabokov
In the summer of 1958, a novel that had been rejected by four American publishers and quietly printed in Paris by a press better known for pornography arrived in the... Read more...
The Heretic of Logic: James R. Meyer on Why Gödel, Searle, and Math’s Sacred Cows Don’t Hold Up
The Heretic of Logic: James R. Meyer on Why Gödel, Searle, and Math’s Sacred Cows Don’t Hold Up
In 1930, at a philosophy conference in Königsberg, a young Kurt Gödel waited quietly for his moment to speak. The gathering had been convened to celebrate the triumph of formal... Read more...
David Schwartz
Was Enrico Fermi Really the Last Man Who Knew Everything? David Schwartz Investigates
On the afternoon of December 2, 1942, a group of scientists gathered beneath the stands of a disused squash court at the University of Chicago and waited. They were standing... Read more...
Biljana Dojčinović
The Complicated Brilliance of John Updike: A Conversation with Biljana Dojčinović
In January 2009, John Updike checked himself into a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts, and spent his final days doing what he had done virtually every morning of his adult life:... Read more...
Robert Miltner
The Things Robert Miltner Talks About When He Talks About Raymond Carver
In 1981, an editor at Knopf named Gordon Lish sat down with a manuscript Raymond Carver had submitted and did something that has generated argument ever since. He cut. He... Read more...
Alberto Pionke
Measured Liberty: Albert Pionke on the Paradoxes of John Stuart Mill
One morning in 1826, John Stuart Mill woke up and felt nothing. He was twenty years old, had read more than most scholars twice his age, and had been constructed—there... Read more...
Jay Parini
The Unrepentant Aristocrat: Jay Parini on Gore Vidal’s Enduring (and Maddening) Legacy
In the summer of 1968, two men sat across from each other on live television during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and conducted one of the most famous exchanges... Read more...
James L. W. West III
In the Heart of Darkness: James L. W. West III on William Styron’s Life and Legacy
In 1967, William Styron published The Confessions of Nat Turner to immediate and tumultuous acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize and selling hundreds of thousands of copies, as readers hailed it as... Read more...
Helena Kelly
Decoding Dickens: Helena Kelly Exposes the Life and Lies Behind the Icon
On the night of June 9, 1865, a train traveling from Folkestone to London derailed on a bridge under repair at Staplehurst, sending several carriages plunging into the river below.... Read more...
Jay Parini
Navigating Borges' Labyrinth: Jay Parini’s Powerful Journey of Memory and Meaning
In the autumn of 1971, a young American graduate student named Jay Parini found himself driving a nearly blind Jorge Luis Borges through the Scottish Highlands in a borrowed car... Read more...
Behind the Shadow: Alan Strauss-Schom Unveils the True Face of Napoleon III
Behind the Shadow: Alan Strauss-Schom Unveils the True Face of Napoleon III
On the morning of September 2, 1870, the Emperor of France climbed into a carriage at Sedan and was driven to deliver his sword in person to the King of... Read more...
Chasin’ the Trane: Lewis Porter Discusses the Life and Music of John Coltrane
Chasin’ the Trane: Lewis Porter Discusses the Life and Music of John Coltrane
On the night of December 9, 1964, John Coltrane led his quartet into Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and recorded A Love Supreme in a... Read more...
Roger Ariew
Descartes' Mind-Blowing Ideas: An Interview with Roger Ariew on Descartes' Impact on Western Thought
In November 1633, Descartes was putting the finishing touches on a treatise he had been working on for several years and preparing to send it to his publisher when news... Read more...
From Stratford to Shanghai: An Interview with the Globetrotting Shakespeare Expert, Professor Michael Dobson
From Stratford to Shanghai: An Interview with the Globetrotting Shakespeare Expert, Professor Michael Dobson
Pull back the curtain on the most famous literary biography in the English language, and you find: almost nothing. No letters. No diaries. No manuscripts in his hand beyond six... Read more...
Robert Barsky
Beyond the Surface: A Close Look at Noam Chomsky’s Ideas with Robert Barsky
In 1971, two of the most formidable intellectual presences of the 20th century sat down across from each other on Dutch television for a debate that has since become one... Read more...
Joseph Auner
The Enigmatic Arnold Schoenberg: Unraveling the Mysteries with Joseph Auner
In the evening of March 31, 1913, the Musikverein in Vienna erupted. The concert had been planned as a celebration of the Viennese avant-garde, featuring new works by Alexander Zemlinsky,... Read more...
Frank Burke
Decoding Fellini: Discovering the Secrets of Federico Fellini with Frank Burke
In the winter of 1959, a filmmaker sat in a Roman hotel room, staring at a blank page, and seriously considered abandoning the film he had promised to make. Federico... Read more...
The Categorical Imperative and Beyond: A Discussion with Markus Kohl on Kant’s Philosophy
The Categorical Imperative and Beyond: A Discussion with Markus Kohl on Kant’s Philosophy
In 1766, Immanuel Kant published a short book mocking the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who claimed to communicate with spirits and angels. The book was sharp, witty, and unsparing in... Read more...
Simon Keefe
In the Footsteps of a Genius: A Conversation with Simon Keefe on Mozart's Final Decade in Vienna
In the summer of 1791, a stranger appeared at Mozart's door in Vienna with a commission and a request for secrecy. The visitor, who refused to identify himself, wanted Mozart... Read more...
Paul Halpern
Unraveling the Quantum World: Paul Halpern on Erwin Schrödinger’s Enduring Influence
In the summer of 1933, Erwin Schrödinger fled Nazi Germany with little more than his manuscripts and a domestic arrangement that scandalized almost everyone he met. He was traveling with... Read more...
Out of Kafka: Ruth Gross Appraises Franz Kafka’s “Dark and Wry” but Humorous World
Out of Kafka: Ruth Gross Appraises Franz Kafka’s “Dark and Wry” but Humorous World
One morning in the summer of 1912, Franz Kafka sat down at his desk in Prague and wrote a story in a single unbroken session that lasted through the night... Read more...
Bruce J. Hillman
Dueling Physicists: Bruce J. Hillman on the Nobel Physicist who Challenged and Antagonized Albert Einstein
There is a photograph taken at the 1927 Solvay Conference in Brussels that has become one of the most reproduced images in the history of science. Gathered around a table... Read more...
Ernest Hemingway Unmasked: Verna Kale Uncovers Hidden Gems in Hemingway's Letters
Ernest Hemingway Unmasked: Verna Kale Uncovers Hidden Gems in Hemingway's Letters
In the summer of 1925, a 26-year-old American living in Paris handed a manuscript to a small publisher on the Left Bank and waited. The Sun Also Rises appeared the... Read more...
Peter Hays
A Clean, Well-Admired Style: Peter Hays On Ernest Hemingway’s Life and Art
In the winter of 1922, a suitcase disappeared at the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Inside it were nearly all of Ernest Hemingway's early manuscripts: stories, poems, and carbon copies... Read more...
No Ordinary Writer: John Banville on Influences and Fashioning “a Singular Voice”
No Ordinary Writer: John Banville on Influences and Fashioning “a Singular Voice”
In 2005, John Banville was in the middle of an ordinary working day in Dublin when his publisher called to tell him he had won the Booker Prize for The Sea.... Read more...
Finding Einstein: Jimena Canales Peels Away Layers of Myth to Unmask Albert Einstein the Man
Finding Einstein: Jimena Canales Peels Away Layers of Myth to Unmask Albert Einstein the Man
Sixteen nominations, sixteen rejections. By the time the Nobel Committee finally awarded Albert Einstein the Prize in Physics in 1922, he had already been passed over so many times that... Read more...
Heather Clark
Not So Silent: Heather Clark Attempts to Restore Sylvia Plath's Rightful Place in American Literature
In October 1962, Sylvia Plath sat alone in a small London flat during one of the coldest English winters in decades, waking before dawn each morning to write while her... Read more...
James C. Kluge
(Mis)understanding Wittgenstein: James Klagge Says Our Temperament May Be at Fault
In the autumn of 1920, one of the most celebrated minds in European philosophy walked into a one-room schoolhouse in the remote Austrian village of Trattenbach and introduced himself to... Read more...
Maestros of Suspense: Jack Sullivan on Music in Hitchcock’s Films
Maestros of Suspense: Jack Sullivan on Music in Hitchcock’s Films
In 1959, Alfred Hitchcock summoned the composer Bernard Herrmann to a screening room and played him the shower scene from Psycho. Hitchcock had already decided that the scene would have no... Read more...
John Bryant
Whale of a Tale: John Bryant Uncovers the “Darkness Underneath the Surface” of American Writer Herman Melville
In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville climbed a mountain in the Berkshires with a group of writers that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, and something shifted. He had been working on... Read more...
Jack of All Trades: Rosa Mayorga on the Life and Work of Charles Sanders Peirce
Jack of All Trades: Rosa Mayorga on the Life and Work of Charles Sanders Peirce
In the winter of 1891, Charles Sanders Peirce sat in a farmhouse in Milford, Pennsylvania, and wrote a letter to William James asking for money. It was not the first... Read more...
In Search of Steinbeck: William Souder Takes a “New Look” at the “Complex and Imperfect” Life of Acclaimed Novelist John Steinbeck
In Search of Steinbeck: William Souder Takes a “New Look” at the “Complex and Imperfect” Life of Acclaimed Novelist John Steinbeck
In October 1962, John Steinbeck was sitting in his home in Sag Harbor, New York, when the telephone rang with news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in... Read more...
Analyzing Language: Stephen Neale on Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of Language
Analyzing Language: Stephen Neale on Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of Language
In the summer of 1900, Bertrand Russell attended an international philosophy conference in Paris and came home convinced he had witnessed a revolution. The Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano had presented... Read more...
Looking For Hemingway: Gay Talese Talks of Men and Books
Looking For Hemingway: Gay Talese Talks of Men and Books
In the summer of 1956, a twenty-four-year-old reporter named Gay Talese arrived at the New York Times and began learning how to write sentences that could not be ignored. He... Read more...
Raphael Salkie: How Noam Chomsky’s “calm, provocative, and unflinching voice” helps us handle challenges of the 21st century
Raphael Salkie: How Noam Chomsky’s “calm, provocative, and unflinching voice” helps us handle challenges of the 21st century
In 1953, a young linguist named Noam Chomsky was working on a doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania that his supervisor, Zellig Harris, found interesting but not particularly earth-shaking.... Read more...
A Novelist and a Fabulist: Carl Rollyson Separates Fact from Fiction in William Faulkner's Life
A Novelist and a Fabulist: Carl Rollyson Separates Fact from Fiction in William Faulkner's Life
In the autumn of 1949, a man who had spent the better part of a decade writing Hollywood screenplays to pay his debts, drinking himself into periodic collapse, and watching... Read more...