Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
Has there ever been a time in American history when the gun-and-violence-obsessed subtext of video games was more problematic? Special Ops: The Line puts you in the place of a grizzled, gun-wielding expert - but it doesn't necessarily want you to feel good about that.
Read MoreJoseph Epstein has a cult following as a sharp-tongued critic and essayist. His latest collection showcases his love of words and ideas as well as his caustic wit.
Read MoreYear after year, D. H.Lawrence found love, lust, and gainful employment in Italy - and through the strange alchemy of the place, he also found the inspirations for some of his most enduring works of art.
Read MoreA conversation about the enduring appeal of Pride & Prejudice.
Read MoreSay “Evgeny Onegin” to any educated Russian and you will trigger the first stanza or two of Pushkin's great novel in verse. Now Russia's national poet is finally coming into his own in the West as well.
Read MoreBen Jonson said that the once wealthy and acclaimed Edmund Spenser died "for want of bread"; a new biography tries to disentangle myth from fact, and to make the case for the great poet's relevance today
Read MoreA conversation with cover artist Aaron Angello
Read MoreNot every actor gets the plum role of vampire hunter and romantic lead Jonathan Harker. Steve Brachmann reflects on his part in the Dracula-inspired rock musical The Dead English
Read MoreWhat do Christopher Marlowe and the newly discovered Higgs boson particle have in common? Anthony Lock explores the connection, by way of unified fields.
Read MoreOpen Letters mourns the loss of Charles Rosen, pianist, scholar, teacher and critic.
Read MoreSome of Anthony Burgess' most accomplished inventions roam into the past, to Shakespeare and Marlowe's England and Jesus' Judea. How well has his historical fiction stood up across the years?
Read MoreGive Anthony Burgess a check and he’d write anything, even a Time-Life picture book. Which doesn’t mean that his 1976 guide to New York is anything less than fascinating.
Read MoreCommissioned to translate Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Anthony Burgess decided on a few changes to the text. What were they, and what do they teach us about fate?
Read MoreNate Silver is currently enjoying his status as that unlikeliest of people, the celebrity statistician. Does his bestseller The Signal and the Noise live up to its carefully calculated expectations?
Read More"I knew my trip would mean an encounter with Adela Quested": Victoria Olsen reflects on what she found, and what was lost in translation, when she travelled to India with E. M. Forster on her mind.
Read MoreBossophilia: The idolization of Bruce Springsteen that comes from midlife nostalgia and a fear of dying. Steve Danziger confronts the phenomenon, and a new biography.
Read MoreAs Americans go to the polls this month to elect a president, some recent biographies examine the lives of five very different men who once held the office.
Read MoreThe fairy tale has been through several metamorphoses; the next might result in its extinction. Max Ross reviews Jack Zipes's cultural history of the genre.
Read More"Although virtually all subjects were still religious, their humanity was brought to the fore, emphasizing that God, in the form of Jesus Christ, was made man and that He, and the Virgin Mary, and saints, like us, had human features"
Read MoreOnce upon a time, the hive-mind of the Internet set to work creating a modern-day bogey man who lurks in plain sight - and so "Slender Man," the dark mirror image of "Where's Waldo," was born
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