Lapham’s Quarterly
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The Rumpus Interview with Terry McDonell
Terry McDonell talks about his new memoir The Accidental Life and his career in the magazine business, which spans the beginning of New Journalism through the digital revolution.
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The Eden of the Surveillance State
Participation in our own surveillance was the price of entry into heaven. In the Winter 2016 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, Amanda Power writes on the history (real and mythological) of the Western surveillance state, whose roots can be found in…
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Why We Write with Words
For wherever writing seems to achieve preeminence as a tool of the powerful, we find at that moment that it becomes possible to take it apart and turn it upon itself, a line of that same material quickened once more…
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The Giving Word
miser: “A wretch covetous to extremity,” according to Samuel Johnson, “who in wealth makes himself miserable by the fear of poverty.” ninjo: 人情 Japanese for human compassion, as compared with social obligations (see giri). noblesse oblige: literally, “noble rank entails…
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Multilingual Farce
David Samuels fact checks Herman Melville down at Lapham’s Quarterly: Who Herman Melville was and what he actually thought about anything are altogether unsatisfying questions that have never been answered in a satisfying way. This has led critics from the…
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Medieval Mongolia’s Undefeated Wrestling Princess
Genghis Khan had a great-granddaughter named Khutulun (the cousin of Kublai Khan), and it sounds like she was a total badass: As she grew older, she joined the public competitions and acquired great fame as the wrestler whom no man…
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Lovely Bones
Halloween may be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep thinking about skeletons. This Lapham’s Quarterly piece by Matthew Leib starts with a science teacher perching hip bones behind his head and “declar[ing] in a deranged falsetto that he [is]…
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Scurvy: The Stuff of Nightmares
If you needed something to remind you not to join any expeditions to the Arctic, this Lapham’s Quarterly piece about scurvy in sailors of centuries past should do the trick: (Trapped in the Arctic in 1832, explorer John Ross began to…
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“Corpse Orders”
The newest addition to the Lapham’s Quarterly “Voices in Time” series unearths a text from c. 700 China instructing spellmen on unearthing jewels buried with the dead: “Then proceed into a tumulus and select an adult male corpse—a body without the marks…
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Notable New York, This Week 3/22 – 3/28
This week in New York a tribute to George Carlin, James Wood reads a book he’s never read before, Shya Scanlon gets other people to read his poems, NYC Twestival 2010, Huggabroomstik, Jeff Lewis and others cover songs by Major…
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Notable New York, This Week 1/25 – 1/31
This week in New York Lydia Davis and Richard Howard read, John Wray, Heidi Julavits and Sarah Manguso discuss ebooks at Melville House, Of Montreal and Damon & Naomi perform, Lapham’s Quarterly celebrates the launch of its Religion Issue, artists…