writing — Bunk History

A caricature of Murray Kempton.

The Rebellions of Murray Kempton

One of his generation’s most prolific journalists, Kempton never turned a blind eye to the inequalities all around him.

by Vivian Gornick via The Nation on April 8, 2025

Séance with spirit manifestation, 1872, by John Beattie.

Immortalizing Words

Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.

by Ashley C. Barnes via The Hedgehog Review on April 30, 2024

The Hollywood sign replaced with the words "The End."

The Life and Death of Hollywood

Film and television writers face an existential threat.

by Daniel Bessner via Harper’s on March 21, 2024

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.

by Osita Nwanevu via The New Republic on January 5, 2024

Chalude Shannon, William Weaver, and Italo Calvino, on a background of binary code

Language Machinery: Who Will Attend to the Machine's Writing?

The ultimate semantic receivers, selectors, and transmitters are still us.

by Richard Hughes Gibson via The Hedgehog Review on November 7, 2023

A photograph of Louisa May Alcott.

Nonfiction That Rivals Little Women: The Forgotten Essays of Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott is best known for Little Women, but she earned her first taste of celebrity as an essayist.

by Liz Rosenberg via Literary Hub on October 24, 2023

Shelby Foote with a drawing of a Civil War battle superimposed over him.

The South’s Jewish Proust

Shelby Foote, failed novelist and closeted member of the Tribe, turned the Civil War into a masterpiece of American literature.

by Blake Smith via Tablet on September 6, 2023

An old journal with cursive writing on the pages

Slanting the History of Handwriting

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.

by Sonja Drimmer via Public Books on August 9, 2023

Illustrated silhouette of a person writing, with handwriting layered over the photo.

How Handwriting Lost Its Personality

Penmanship was once considered a window to the soul. The digital age has closed it.

by Rachel Gutman-Wei via The Atlantic on July 11, 2023

Sedat Pakay, James Baldwin, Istanbul, 1966.

James Baldwin in Turkey

How Istanbul changed his career—and his life.

by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi via The Yale Review on June 12, 2023

The sillhouette of a Civil War statue on a night sky.

The Spirit of Appomattox

Why is Shelby Foote's Civil War subject to so much contemporary debate?

by Jonathan Clarke via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2023

Black Panther mural dating from 1996, side wall of Rick’s Barbershop, 3406 Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, 2011 (LOC).

George Jackson in a Global Frame

The story of George Jackson and his radical politics that challenged the American Government in an age of political repression.

by Andrew Anastasi via Black Perspectives on January 24, 2023

Octavia E. Butler.

The Spectacular Life of Octavia E. Butler

The story of the girl who grew up in Pasadena, took the bus, loved her mom and grandmother, and wrote herself into the world.

by E. Alex Jung via Vulture on November 21, 2022

Mark Wallinger's "Self-Portrait," a painting showing black dripping paint in the silhouette of an unfurled scroll on a grey background

The Illusion of the First Person

The personal essay is the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.

by Merve Emre via New York Review of Books on October 11, 2022

Graphic showing black cursive handwriting on a red background, with a white question mark in the corner

Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive

How will they interpret the past?

by Drew Gilpin Faust via The Atlantic on September 16, 2022

Collage of documents and photographs relating to Younghill Kang.

Younghill Kang Is Missing

How an Asian American literary pioneer fell into obscurity.

by Esther Kim via Asian American Writers' Workshop on September 7, 2022

Illustration of Thomas Stevens on his bike

The 19th-Century Hipster Who Pioneered Modern Sportswriting

More than a century before GoPro, Thomas Stevens’ around-the-world bike ride vaulted first-person “sports porn” into the mainstream.

by Robert Isenberg via Longreads on April 26, 2022

Henry James; illustration by James McMullan

Visions of Waste

"The American Scene" is Henry James’s indictment of what Americans had made of their land.

by Peter Brooks via New York Review of Books on March 3, 2022

Black and white photograph of Mark Twain

Mark Twain in Buffalo

Mark Twain would be hopelessly out of favor with both wings of the modern duopoly.

by Bill Kauffman via The Spectator on January 3, 2022

Collage of Stephen Crane with Civil War scenes

The Miracle of Stephen Crane

Born after the Civil War, he turned himself into its most powerful witness—and modernized the American novel.

by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on October 18, 2021

Abstract drawing of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, Crank Scientist

The great discoveries of the age captivated Poe’s imagination. He almost always misunderstood them.

by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on July 21, 2021

Mabel Dodge Luhan

The Strange Revival of Mabel Dodge Luhan

The memoirist is at the center of two new, very different books: a biography of D. H. Lawrence and a novel by Rachel Cusk. Has she been rescued or reduced?

by Rebecca Panovka via The New Yorker on June 2, 2021

Richard Wright

When Richard Wright Broke With the Communists

His posthumously released novel, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” was written during a crisis of political faith.

by Colin Asher via The New Republic on April 19, 2021

Veteran and militia during 1919 Chicago Race Riot

Rereading 'Darkwater'

W.E.B. DuBois, 100 years ago.

by Chad Williams via National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on February 22, 2021

Photographic collage of James Baldwin

Bringing It Back to Baldwin

Joel Rhone reviews Eddie Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

by Joel Rhone via The Drift on October 21, 2020

The Forever War Over War Literature

A post-9/11 veteran novelist explores a post-Vietnam literary soiree gone bad, and finds timeless lessons about a contentious and still-evolving genre.

by Matt Gallagher via The New Republic on July 17, 2020

Flannery O'Connor standing outside at her Georgia home.

How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?

She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.

by Paul Elie via The New Yorker on June 15, 2020

To Be Mary MacLane

In the early twentieth century, Mary MacLane’s genre-defying books earned the scorn of critics and the adoration of readers across the nation.

by Penelope Rosemont via The Paris Review on December 5, 2019

Herman Melville at Home

The novelist drew on far-flung voyages to create his masterpiece. But he could finish it only at his beloved Berkshire farm.

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on July 22, 2019

Whitman, Melville, & Julia Ward Howe: A Tale of Three Bicentennials

The difference between the careers and reputations of the three famous authors is about gender as well as genius.

by Elaine Showalter via New York Review of Books on May 27, 2019

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