NEWREPUBLIC
The Poem that Foretold Modernism
How Stéphane Mallarmé's greatest work was forged from tragedy.
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We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy
2008's “Burn After Reading” strikingly resembles the bumbling plot of Trump's Russia scandal, but also captures how amorality leads to treason.
NewRepublic
Everybody Hates Henry David Thoreau
Literary saint or arrogant fraud -- why do we need Thoreau to be one or the other? A very well written piece, about a thinker I thought I should like but began to despise as soon I started reading him. Was I oblivious to his sense of humor?
NEWREPUBLIC
The philosophy of Lovecraft's horror
H.P. Lovecraft Invented a Horrific World to Escape a Nihilistic Universe.
NEWREPUBLIC
Civilization Caused a Series of Disasters
Why did our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors give up their freedom?