essays | The Smart Set

Reimagining Excess

Matt Hanson — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:22:02 +0000

“All Things Are Too Small” declares the title, borrowed from a 13th-century Dutch mystic, of the new collection of essays by Becca Rothfeld, one of the most prolific and versatile critics working today. The claim initially confused me. Too small? Casting a weary glance at the way we live now — visual excess blaring from […]

The post Reimagining Excess first appeared on The Smart Set.

At the Crossroads

Melinda Lewis — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 11:30:20 +0000

Within the past few years I have succumbed to a period of feminist ennui. It’s not that I no longer think the principles of equality are no longer important, but it seems as if the word and movement, “feminism,” has lost meaning. It has been co-opted, lazily applied, and devalued. I’ve become frustrated by so-called […]

The post At the Crossroads first appeared on The Smart Set.

Mencken in the Middle

Paula Marantz Cohen — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 14:47:26 +0000

In the face of our nation’s current turmoil, I suggest that we open our Mencken. This gadfly journalist and critic provides an astute analysis of issues relevant to us today. Henry Louis (H.L.) Mencken was born in 1880 and died in 1956. He was by nature intemperate and irritable. He disliked most politicians, critics, and […]

The post Mencken in the Middle first appeared on The Smart Set.

The Novelist as Anglerfish

John Cotter — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 13:47:39 +0000

When I was a child I read poorly written Sunday-school books. They happened to be Catholic books because I read them in a Catholic Sunday school. My mother was a Congregationalist and she would have preferred I be reared to that austere faith, but she lacked the strength to battle the passionate alcoholics and living […]

The post The Novelist as Anglerfish first appeared on The Smart Set.

Uncertain Terms

Elisa Gabbert — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 14:43:37 +0000

In How Not to Be Wrong, mathematician Jordan Ellenberg uses a John Ashbery line as a guiding principle for those making claims or predictions based on probabilistic mathematical models (or any models, really): “For this is action, this not being sure.” Ellenberg calls it “the greatest summation I know of the way uncertainty and revelation […]

The post Uncertain Terms first appeared on The Smart Set.

Writing and Whistle-Blowing

Morgan Meis — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 16:12:43 +0000

George Orwell was not a political thinker, exactly. Sure, he wrote books like 1984 and Animal Farm. Those books are political. Or better put, they are political thought experiments in novel form. Orwell liked to think about totalitarianism. He created fictional scenarios like 1984 in order to think through the logic of totalitarianism, to find […]

The post Writing and Whistle-Blowing first appeared on The Smart Set.

Hubbard at 100

Morgan Meis — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:12:43 +0000

He was a writer, first and foremost, and he spent a lot of time thinking about writing. He was a good writer. He could turn a phrase. He could move a story along. Still, it was difficult to make any money at the thing. He spent some time in Greenwich Village in the 1930s, hanging […]

The post Hubbard at 100 first appeared on The Smart Set.

The Change Gang

Morgan Meis — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:12:43 +0000

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. James Wood and Zadie Smith were doing battle in the sky. James was in silver armor and upon it the starlight did twinkle so. Zadie was in flowing white gowns. Her face was aglow with what I can only describe as a honey radiance. Still, […]

The post The Change Gang first appeared on The Smart Set.

Dear David

Morgan Meis — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:12:43 +0000

Nobody ever really knows why someone else commits suicide — that’s what makes it an ultimate act, an unsettling challenge to those of us who keep on. Anyway, it doesn’t matter why. The death of David Foster Wallace is simply a fact now and we’re the ones who have to deal with it. I […]

The post Dear David first appeared on The Smart Set.