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she was an early critic of how the streaming economy relies less on delivering hit tunes than on keeping us within a narrow gradient of chill vibes

It’s not an idle allusion. Flaubert, writing a century earlier, had been looking for an alternative to Romanticism, a tendency he defined as broadly as Yvor Winters later did. The result, “Madame Bovary,” inaugurated a new, more formally conscious kind of realism. Williams identified something called “the Flaubertian novel, with its concern for loc

the very possession of these books formed his identity as a reader, writer, and human being—even if he hadn’t read all of them.

Kyle Chayka • Filterworld

So here lies the publishing industry: the “accessible,” commercial book at the bottom, necessary to the bottom line but not worthy of adulation; and in the rarefied air on top, there’s the masculine, the artistic, and the reliant on cultural patronage. That’s an exaggeration and simplification—but not by much. These attitudes dictate how we ascribe

Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman

The Keatsian endeavor has never been popular, but is particularly unfashionable today. Religious fundamentalists reject it on the grounds that revelation and commitment are needed to orient oneself in the world. The amorality of a poet who is a “thoroughfare for all thoughts” risks heresy or destabilization. Tell me where you stand, where your loya... See more

Zohar Atkins • The Liberal Arts Are Dying Because Liberalism is Dying

I know that I’m supposed to hate Elon Musk; I was asked to review his biography because I’m the kind of person who can be relied upon to hate Elon Musk. Because of his terrible politics, or his hideous wealth. Or simply as a matter of taste. But despite everything, I find it very hard to hate the man. I can’t summon the energy; it all feels too muc... See more

Sam Kriss • Very Ordinary Men | The Point Magazine

IN 2002, ACCORDING TO THE self-appointed cultural anthropologists at Newsweek magazine, there were exactly three types of teenage girls in America. You could be an Alpha: a blonde who loved cheerleading, worshiped Gwyneth and Vogue, and managed to be “both bitchy and nice.” You could be a Beta, which was basically an aspiring Alpha; Betas reportedl... See more

Julia Stiles Wanted to Be Just Like Kat Stratford, Too

In this and other recent programming, Netflix is pioneering a genre that I’ve come to think of as ambient television. It’s “as ignorable as it is interesting,” as the musician Brian Eno wrote, when he coined the term “ambient music” in the liner notes to his 1978 album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports,” a wash of slow melodic synth compositions.

Kyle Chayka • “Emily in Paris” and the Rise of Ambient TV

What made my experience unusual was the fact that my sheltered life caused me to find my peers’ behaviour not just cruel but bizarre—and that I had enough remove to be curious about it, too. I simply could not figure out why little kids with allowances of a couple quarters a week were judging each other for what they did or did not possess.