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Lea Carpenter
Lea Carpenter was a Founding Editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope. She graduated from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard. Her Harvard University Commencement Address, “Auden and The Little Things,” was about the need for poetry in our lives. She lives in New York with her husband and son where she produces programming for the New York Public Library. She formerly wrote the Think, See, Feel blog for BigThink.
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When Sting sang “Young teacher/the subject/of school-girl fantasy,” it may well have been that he was thinking about an English teacher in a certain place and time, having been one […]
Aslan, C.S. Lewis’s lion, has meant many different things to many different readers at many different times. He means one thing to the scholar and another to the child. He […]
The Ice Storm, Rick Moody’s novel, was published in 1994, set in 1973. One of the things readers who loved the book but were not yet born (or were barely […]
Frank Rich’s piece in the New York Review of Books, “Why Has He Fallen Short?” questions the benefits of raw intelligence as the key skill for political life. Or rather, […]
Is it possible that it is not yet boring to talk about the end of books, the end of literature, the increasingly (at once obsessive and trite) making rare of […]
Harvard Business School alumni have been passing around an article via email. David Brooks referenced it on the Times Op-Ed page. The article was written by Professor Clayton Christensen, one […]
Making America fall in love with Don Draper is dangerous, because we will want to be him, or be with him, and both of these will bring moral compromise.
Tell your children not to write anything down. Tell them that this phenomenon, this global mania for being public about every aspect of our lives, is something that will catch […]
They have always loved him. But now the media is more in love with President Clinton than ever, as they have something simple and straightforward to celebrate: the marriage of […]
There will be more. Julian Assange has assured us this: there will be more. Do we want more? Will the release of more classified material place more lives at risk? […]
“We never know the source of the leak,” Julian Assange assured a London audience today at the Frontline Club. The uniquely charismatic WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief went on: “We could make a […]
Inception is a film that entertains, but also one that may pride itself on making viewers think. It’s your choice. This art of coupling entertainment with (the possibility of) puzzles, […]
“Words matter.” This was what Obama said during his campaign. Did his celebrated belief in—and unique gift with—language factor into his choice of artist Ed Ruscha when considering a gift […]
Dani Shapiro’s recent New York Times editorial was not the first shot fired in the never-ending debate about the limits of artistic license, but it is one of the most […]
Paris doesn’t pause. The New York Times cover story today on a scandal consuming the city noted that “this being France, a film will be made, and comparisons to the […]
David Mitchell is the subject of the latest Paris Review Interview. He is charming. When asked, “Are you a storyteller outside of your writing?” he replies, “No. I botch jokes […]
Wall Street II features a hedge fund manager. What will he be like? N+1 editor Keith Gessen has published a book,Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous […]
It’s not Shakespearean. It’s not eloquent. It may not even be meaningful as anything other than today’s shallow distraction. Yet Gibson’s hate-laced phone porn has captured our attention. Is it […]
“No one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended.” This was English author Philip Pullman’s response (speaking […]
In two days, To Kill A Mockingbird turns fifty. God bless this book. For whatever reasons, we still need this books in our lives, on our syllabi; we still need […]