Two Artists’ Divergent Roads to Eros
This article appeared in the New York Times. Eva Hesse / Hannah Wilke: Erotic Abstraction An exhibition at Acquavella Galleries The...
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Daphne Merkin
Joan Semmel Takes an Unflinching View of Her Own Body
This article appeared in the New York Times. JOAN SEMMEL WAS defiant from the start, not the sort to go with the flow even as a young...
David Grossman's New Novel is a Multigenerational Saga About Love and Loss
This article appeared in the New York Times MORE THAN I LOVE MY LIFE By David Grossman Translated by Jessica Cohen Like Aladdin and his...
The Laconic Verses
This article appeared in Book Forum. One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival by Donald Antrim DEPRESSION, FOR ALL THAT HAS...
Will We Ever Understand Addiction?
This article appeared in the New York Times. THE URGE Our History of Addiction By Carl Erik Fisher Our culture, ever on the lookout for...
The Books That Have Gotten Me Through the Pandemic
This article appeared in Vogue. As an omnivorous reader, I expected the start of COVID-19 to bring out all my high-minded readerly...
Roddy Doyle's Stories of Life in Lockdown
This article appeared in the New York Times. LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN Stories By Roddy Doyle The act of pulling off good sentences, one...
The Cult of Saint Joan
This article appeared in the New York Times. In 1979, as a young and intrepid critic, I devoted my books column in The New Leader to Joan...
Mum’s Boy: A famous misanthrope shows his heartwarming side
This article appeared in BookForum PHILIP LARKIN: LETTERS HOME, 1936–1977 EDITED BY JAMES BOOTH. LONDON: FABER & FABER. 688 PAGES IT WAS...
He Liked Having Enemies: The contested legacy of D. H. Lawrence
This article appeared in Bookforum BURNING MAN: THE TRIALS OF D. H. LAWRENCE BY FRANCES WILSON HAS THERE EVER BEEN A WRITER more reviled...
The Cant-Free Elegance of Jenny Diski’s Irresistible Mind
WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST DO WHAT YOU WERE TOLD? Essays By Jenny Diski I’ve never been quite sure what the phrase “an acquired taste” is...
The Afterlife: Revisiting Roth's Promise
PHILIP ROTH: THE BIOGRAPHY By Blake Bailey I SUPPOSE IT MIGHT BE SAID—and, in fact, has been said in one form or another since this...
What’s Love Got to Do with It?HBO’s new documentary on Tina Turner
Before the rise of #MeToo, the ongoing cascade of sexual-harassment accusations it set off, and the fetishization of victimhood, there...
Five Best: On Desire Selected by Daphne Merkin
What Endless Love By Scott Spencer (1979) 1. Before Scott Spencer’s novel was made into not one but two cheesy movies, it began life as a...
Red Comet: Shifting the Focus From Sylvia Plath’s Tragic Death to Her Brilliant Life
RED COMET The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath By Heather Clark What becomes a legend most? As suggested by the old...
A Very Lonely Business
Whenever I pick up a new book by a woman I check the author biography on the back flap to see whether she has children. I’m not entirely...
The Marriage Ended. The Company Thrived.
The New York Times | SAN RAFAEL, CALIF. — It is a bright September day and I am standing in a 45,000-square-foot space in Marin County...
Requiem for a Mustache
There was more to Burt Reynolds than his hypermasculinity, but he was a man for a cultural moment. It was the Age of the Mustache — and...
The Story of Eau
Perhaps it might help to think of it this way, all of you who are, like me, convinced that somewhere out there — in a tiny corner of a...
How a New Generation of Empowered Female Consumers and Indie Designers is Reshaping How We Buy
In the hands of a female jewelry designer, a diamond or sapphire can take on not only a new shape but a new meaning. From time...
Writings & Reviews
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