Arts & Life

You’re probably reading and hearing a lot about coronavirus — the symptoms, its spread around the world, the calls for “social distancing.” If the constant news and updates are making you anxious, consider one of these novels or stories. You wouldn’t be alone: Publishers are reporting booming sales for books …

When the poet Osip Mandelstam was arrested by the Soviet secret police in the 1930s, he was taken to the notorious Lubyanka prison for interrogation. He drew a distinction between the guards “on the outside” — village youths doing terrible things out of a dim sense of duty — and …

Early James — the Alabama-born singer and songwriter Frederick James Mullis Jr. — just sidles his way into the first song on “Singing for My Supper,” his debut album. “Blue Pill Blues” has an instrumental intro that lasts more than a minute, with its riffs bubbling up out of what …

HAVANA (Reuters) – Dozens of renowned Cuban artists from across the political spectrum are calling for the release of dissident artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara who was arrested 10 days ago, decrying this as an outdated act of censorship. FILE PHOTO: Organizer of the “00Biennial” Luis Manuel Otero …

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 …