It’s Alive!
Two hundred years of the world’s most beloved monster.
October 26, 2018
More by The Common Reader
Merry Christmas … or the Wish for Something Like It
Season's readings, and a 2020 roundup, for a year that could never end too soon.
College Interrupted, Part Two
Washington University students contemplate activism, the forces of the pandemic, and their futures as they return to school and working life.
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Untitled Pictures in an Exhibition
The untitled photograph is not merely a breach between memory and hope, but rather an invitation to inhabit that breach from a distance.
Journey to the Crossroads of America and the Hope of Obama Land
Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center—dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent—really shore up democracy?
Remembering Richard Wright, Outsider
Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after “Native Son” have much to recommend them. Still, “Native Son” and “Black Boy” stand as his most enduring achievements. They capture the isolation from mainstream society that is the reality of many young Black people, in the time of Wright’s youth and in our time.
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The Speculative Value of a Stolen Literary Bust
By the time it was gone, the change was subtle but unmistakable: one corner left without its figure, one pedestal left bare. But to understand why that absence matters, it helps to understand who Kate Chopin was and the stories she wrote.
Recipes for Rascals
The ginger nut (and by association other cookies of its type, such as those made with black peppercorns) has an aggressive presence but offers scant sustenance. It is meant to aid digestion of other things, to have a warming effect in winter, to relieve boredom, and perhaps to remind us we are alive in the sometimes dry, husky business of life.
Standing at the Edge of Two Worlds
Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.