The Passion of Mario Savio
Saint, saboteur, or square? Fifty years after the Free Speech Movement, a look back at its charismatic leader.
Winter 2026
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Odd Women
George Gissing’s novel captured our two-steps-forward, one-step-back journey to the “new” woman and man.
Candide’s Garden: A Parable
When changing the very mechanisms for change is off-limits . . .
Theses on the Feminist Novel
Not every novel that concerns itself with the lives of women is a feminist novel.
For Pleasure: A Letter
Difficulty is not an inherent virtue. A book must on some level give pleasure.
Politics As Psychological Fulfillment: Judith Stein Responds to Rick Perlstein
Part three of our debate on the rise of the right.
“The View From 30,000 Feet”:
Rick Perlstein Responds to Judith Stein
The author of Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan debates reviewer Judith Stein on the rise of the right in the 1970s.
The Rise of Reagan’s America
In his latest book, Rick Perlstein tells lively stories at the expense of the political complexity.
Bartlebys All!
Few institutions have offered themselves as less promising for the novelist than the modern office. And yet…
Introduction: The Gunshot Concert
Introducing our special Fall edition on Politics and the Novel—with essays by Nikil Saval, Vivian Gornick, Benjamin Hale, Helen Dewitt, Nina Martyris, and Roxane Gay—David Marcus asks: what happened to the political novel?
Six Fables
Six fables by Syrian poet Osama Alomar.
Vanished Writer, Vanished Book
…I cannot write otherwise than I do write. I am unable to, and I will not, even though I should want to violate myself; there is a literary law which makes it impossible to violate a literary talent—even with your …
On Literary Criticism and Political Action
It was a pleasure to read Lawrence W. Hyman’s statement: “It is not a moral direction that we must look for in literature but a disturbance.” Hyman provides an exciting way for handling moralistic objections—from Left and Right—that art is …
A Critic of Literature and Politics
Writers and Politics by Conor Cruise O’Brien New York, Pantheon. 259 pp. $4.95. Conor Cruise O’Brien, at least on the international scene the radical-liberal intellectual par excellence, has recently published a new collection of articles and speeches, Writers and Politics. …
So Who’s Not Mad? : On Marat/Sade and Nihilism
It was Susan Sontag, I think, who first pointed up the extreme theatricality of Marat/Sade. Susan Sontag was right, Marat/Sade is theatrical. Is the play dramatic, though? About this there seems to be some question in even Miss Sontag’s mind. …
