ARTICLES

 

The Great Gatsby at 100 1.18.25
On (Not Quite) Making It 12.31.24
God and Man at Notre Dame 11.15.24
On the Moral Status of Addicts 10.4.24
Scott Fitzgerald’s Last Act Summer 2024
Your New York, and Mine 3.15.24
Why Regis High School Endures 1.26.24
Moneyball 1.05.24
What’s Left of Psychoanalysis? Autumn 2023
Review of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer 9.8.23
The Undiscovered Country 6.23.23
Stay in the Moment Spring 2023
Reading Martin Amis 5.24.23
Rod Serling’s Enduring Appeal 5.12.23
Fourth and Long for the NCAA 4.28.23
The Fast Casual Society 4.14.23
Norman Mailer on City Politics 2.24.23
HBO's "Sex Diaries" Is a Cynical Misfire 1.20.23
Annie Ernaux: All Ego, No Boundaries 10.21.22
Review of “Babysitter”, by Joyce Carol Oates 9.23.22
Historian in the Arena 8.15.22
Larkin in America 8.5.22
A Rare Talent, a Lingering Absence 7.22.22
Many Summers of Love 6.10.22
The Enigma of Cool 6.3.22
Orwell’s Humor 5.3.22
The Hard-Knock Life 4.22.22
William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision Winter 22
In Search of a Point 2.4.22
Leaving the Field 11.17.21
John Updike and the Politics of Literary Reputation 9.24.21
Loving the Fight 8.13.21
Doctor’s Son 7.2.21
A Tragic Destiny 4.9.21
Show Me the Money 3.30.21
Old School 2.15.21
Political Football 9.25.20
Country Music and the Limits of Nostalgia 1.31.20
Watching and Its Implications 10.18.19
Promise and Waste 6.21.19
Living to Regret 6.14.19
Wishful Thinking on Antitrust 3.8.19
Pater Familiar 6.19.20
A Writer’s Honor 12.6.19
Free Markets and Their Critics 11.7.19
For Love of Watching the Game 8.30.19
Advertisements for America 8.2.19
Fields of Dreams 12.20.18

FAVORITES

Links to articles that I’m particularly pleased with and that I think are representative of the subjects that interest me. “William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision” probably represents my best work. If you want something shorter, “The Enigma of Cool,” about the late television personality Anthony Bourdain, might do the trick.

The Enigma of Cool 6.3.22
Anthony Bourdain overcame addiction to find midlife fame and make a decade’s worth of transformative television. The end came too soon.

William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision Winter 2022
In Yoknapatawpha County, the past never speaks with a single voice.

Winning Traditions Winter 2018-19
The moment before kickoff at Notre Dame Stadium…

John Updike and the Politics of Literary Reputation 9.24.21
A decade after his death, one of our greatest literary stylists has fallen into critical disfavor.

Orwell’s Humor 5.13.22
The British writer confronted totalitarianism with determination but also with wit and irony.

A Brutal Cosmos March 2023

 
 
 

Winning Traditions Winter 2018 - 2019

 
 
 
 

William Langewiesche and “Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight” 2.13.18
The prize-winning magazine writer's first book is a blueprint for the world as he sees it, exploring themes to come in the next 20 years
“Why’s This So Good?” No. 99: Renata Adler and ‘Reckless Disregard’ 12.3.15
Renata Adler’s "Reckless Disregard," an account of two momentous libel trials that took place simultaneously in the same lower Manhattan courtroom in 1985, is a sustained attack on both the law and on journalism

 
 

Briefcase Blues 3.16.10