Books

A great heaving portion of pleasure comes from the mystery of sex. No wonder humans most often use metaphors to talk about fucking. 

The actor and writer joins us on the telephone from his Great Aunt Doris's home in Murray Hill. 

The things we hope for in life—stability, moments of unexpected joy and recognition, the creation of a kind of legacy—are the same things many of us look for in what we read, and in what we write.

Cities change, and the way that writers write about them changes as well. A place's past can act as a kind of call to arms, or it can become the backdrop for a different kind of story.

Talking with the author of The Other Paris about the attacks in France, how writing about Paris is different than writing about New York, and making peace with "aggressively repellent" buildings.

Speaking with the ceramicist and author of The White Road about how his work in writing and art influence and inform each other, bringing historical figures to life, and how to leave space in a book.

The 1943 killing of a Manhattan heiress led to a demonizing public conversation on homosexuality. A decade later, a true crime book obfuscated the sexual details.

Talking with the author of A Strangeness in My Mind about writing about food and eating, urban exploration, and bringing the humanity of background characters to the fore.

The spy's relationship with the villain Colonel Sun veered from tradition: absent a manufactured fatal love triangle, Amis examined the toxic, unsatisfying power dynamics between like minds.