Books

||Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
While Professors Starve

John Williams’ classic, Stoner, resonates especially now that the ideals its characters hold—the university as refuge for the sensitive, inquisitive types—have been so thoroughly crushed.

Last Chance on Red Planet

Earth is doomed—to science fiction writers, always, and increasingly to the rest of us. Enter Mars Literature: a surprisingly hopeful subgenre that might contain the clues to our species' survival.

Pop Lit: When Books and Music Meet, Flawlessly and Otherwise

When it works—think Beyoncé and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Blur and Martin Amis, Nirvana and Patrick Süskind—the intersection of pop music and literature can be a wonderful, mutually beneficial thing.

How To Run (Away To) The Circus

The author meets an old carny who could have been stripped from the pages of her new novel.