Everyone wants to be happy, but what serious reader wants to read about happiness? The French author Henry de Montherlant said that “happiness writes in white ink on a white page.” It can’t be captured; not with dignity, anyway. Happy art so often equals kitsch. The poet Edward Hirsch, in …

THE GRINGA By Andrew Altschul When Americans move to the global south, they are not immigrants but “expats,” which usually means they are rich, simply by dint of their access to dollars, and that they can go home anytime. Having myself lived for eight years in South America, I can …

In my favorite story, “Accepted,” a student pretends to have gotten into Stanford, going so far as to audit classes and join the campus R.O.T.C. program in the hopes that the school might eventually admit her before her parents catch on that she has let them down. Throughout the ruse, …

NEW WAVES By Kevin Nguyen It can be thrilling, in a novel, to encounter a cautious, observant narrator in proximity to a supporting character who is everything he’s not: charismatic, reckless, alluring, loose with the truth, suspiciously worldly. The fleeting stars from “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” or “Special Topics in …

YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN StoriesBy Mary South A virus snaking across the globe, headlines and viral tweets spreading conspiracy theories and panic, warnings not to touch one another or gather in person: Mary South couldn’t have predicted our current moment, but her stories could not feel timelier. Anxieties about …

Do you ever feel like the plaything of an enormous fate? Do you sense subterranean forces? Are you interested in estrangement and recrimination? Are you at home with ambiguity? Maybe the novels of Robert Stone (1937-2015) are for you. A simmering paranoia bubbles under the surface of Stone’s fiction, a …

Oona Doherty’s entrance would have been better had it been a surprise; it wasn’t, but it was still a doozy. This contemporary choreographer and performer from Belfast is astonishing — not merely raw, as she is often described, but exactingly articulate. She is in possession of a body with as …

HARARE (Reuters) – When Dominic Benhura started creating traditional Zimbabwean stone sculptures as a teenager four decades ago, he never imagined that art would bring him fame or fortune. Zimbabwean sculptor Dominic Benhura works on a piece at his studio in Harare, Zimbabwe, March 2, 2020. Picture taken March 2, …

(Reuters) – Twitter Inc said on Thursday it is banning posts that “dehumanize” people because they have a disease or disability or because of their age, a step that happens to correspond to an explosion of tweets about the spreading coronavirus. Example tweets provided by social media company Twitter show …

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation on Thursday to curb the online distribution of child sexual abuse material and threatens technology companies that offer encryption. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) attends an event celebrating the anniversary of the White House’s Women’s Global …