Mike Tyson Moves to the Suburbs
The gold caps on his teeth are gone, as are the frenzied trappings of celebrity: the nonstop partying, the cars, the jewelry, the pet...
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Daphne Merkin
Philip Seymour Hoffman: A Small Boy Chased By Furies
I first noticed Philip Seymour Hoffman in a big way when I was reviewing movies for this magazine and spotted him—I referred to him as...
In Search of the Skeptical, Hopeful, Mystical Jew That Could Be Me
What brought me to the small, neat office in the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles at the tacky southern edge of Beverly Hills where the...
The Wild Bunch: About the Kardashians,
Are you keeping up with the family? Last night I dreamed I was a Kardashian. Maybe it was my close-to- midnight reading of “Kardashian...
Introducing Soon-Yi Previn
As controversies tumbled around her, the daughter of Mia Farrow and wife of Woody Allen stayed silent for decades. No more. Once, she was...
Who's Sorry Now?
Frustration and regret can be good for you, according to one of the most provocative contemporary thinkers in the field of human...
A Journey Through Darkness
IT IS A SPARKLING DAY IN MID-JUNE, the sun out in full force, the sky a limpid blue. I am lying on my back on the grass, listening to the...
Is Depression Inherited?
SOME of my happiest moments have been spent as a mother. I say this despite being a constitutionally unhappy person who has fought all...
Kate Spade and the Illness Hidden With a Smile.
Suicide, no matter how well we know a person, usually comes as a shock, even a violation, putting the lie to our conviction that...
Women, Men and the Way We Write About Depression
A woman is standing in her kitchen, making a pot of coffee, spooning out the pungent overpriced ground beans from their snappy little...
On Not Becoming a Lesbian
Although I have preferred the company of my own sex to that of men for as far back as I can remember, I've never had a lesbian...
Everyday detrius
Musing about death and the self Contemporary life, ever thrusting forward, straining for the next new thing, seems to leave little room...
Sex and the Cinema: How Hollywood Shaped Desire
Who doesn’t love movies? When my mother was gravely ill, there was nothing she wanted more than to watch the screeners of new films I...
Between Love and Madness
It was a summer of love—no, make that sex, the exquisitely passionate kind that taught Daphne Merkin the thrill of obsession Girls in...
My Boy Friend: I love him but I'm not in love with him
He's gay, I love him, but I'm not in love with him. Get over it. Daphne Merkin puts a bullet in the fag hag I am standing at water's edge...
When Sex Becomes Unsexy
Girls,Grey, sexting, porn—in this erotically charged moment, Daphne Merkin wonders: Whatever happened to great sex? A group of young...
Are Single Women the World's True Romantics?
I am sitting with my sister-in-law, a contented wife and mother of four, in the garden of her summer house on a balmy afternoon. We are...
What, Exactly, is the Future of Sex?
It is a mid-July weekend, and in my little rented house in Bridgehampton, New York, I am glued to the TV, indifferent to the fact that it...
Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings
All those years, all that money, all that unrequited love. It began way back when I was a child, an anxiety-riddled 10-year-old who...
Mother of All Surrogates
My attachment to the intricate, fiercely inconsistent woman who is my mother has always been shot through with ambivalence. It is as if...
Writings & Reviews
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