Ruth Bernard Yeazell
Laughs and Smiles

Frans Hals’s animated paintings allow viewers to feel the presence of an artist whose life is largely unknown.

Evan Kindley
Departments on the Defensive

A new book by John Guillory explores the history of literary studies and casts a despairing eye at the future of literary criticism.

Magda Teter
Reckoning with a Troubled Past

Two European museum exhibitions made good-faith efforts to bear witness to their towns’ early libels against Jews, while not always avoiding the pitfalls of historically loaded discourse.

Thomas Rogers
The Long Shadow of German Colonialism

The people of what was once German-occupied Africa are demanding reparations for the colonial violence that shapes the region to this day.

Sam Needleman
Michaelina’s Boys

In “The Five Senses,” the long-forgotten Flemish painter Michaelina Wautier showcases her vision of vision.

The Island

a poem by 
Lauren K. Watel

I swam without ceasing around the rocks guarding the island, the looming black rocks slick with surf. In sunlight they shone like onyx, as if polished. In a storm they were flat and dull as slate. I used to search for an opening in the rocks, some small gap through which to slip my body, in the hopes of finding calmer waters…

Free from the Archives

In 2006 longtime New York Review contributor Larry McMurtry and his frequent collaborator Diana Ossana won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for their script to the film Brokeback Mountain. Five years later, two days after the 2011 Oscars ceremony, the two got together to discuss, for the Review, the confusions (“It was our first exposure to the Red Carpet, a weird anthropological ritual, at which journalists yell questions at you, most of which you can’t hear”), tedium (“Five and a half hours sitting at a table, listening to every journalist in Los Angeles who had ever written a film review”), and occasional pleasures (“As we were leaving, Murdoch said, ‘Hello, Larry,’ and shook my hand. The power of victory, since I’d never met the man”) of participating in the annual Hollywood awards season

Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana
Mixed Pickles in Hollywood

Larry McMurtry: My jeans created a sensation, since I couldn’t find my tuxedo pants.

Diana Ossana: You had your tuxedo pants. When I saw you wearing jeans, I said you would look nice in a full tuxedo, and you snapped back that you didn’t want to be uncomfortable sitting in the auditorium for five hours at one stretch.