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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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Are spies like us? Just watch this. And then, well ensconced in romance and nostalgia, consider that Ian Fleming said—or did he write?—that “men want a woman whom they can […]
Queen Elizabeth II is here, and today she spoke about peace. She said, in her speech at the United Nations, “the waging of peace is the hardest form of leadership […]
New York magazine’s cover story on the (negative) impact of children on happiness begs a larger question—and one appropriate so near to Independence Day (“life, liberty, and the pursuit” etc.): […]
David Brooks’s recent love letter to Christopher Hitchens called (respectfully) only glancing attention to the celebrated author’s current battle with cancer; instead, Brooks focused on how important Hitchens is to […]
We need poetry in our lives. It is not a luxury. It is not only for an elite. And it does something that no other art form can do, even […]
Meanwhile, let another Rolling Stone reporter take your attention, for a different if no less compelling reason: a meditation on a writer we miss, David Foster Wallace. In the latest […]
In Scott Turow’s Times Book Review cover piece on Adam Ross’s novel, Mr. Peanut, he recalls the time a revered Stanford writing professor cautioned students against writing about marriage, “the […]
George Packer’s review of Peter Beinart’s book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, is itself an elegant analysis of American history. Packer highlights some of choices our leaders […]
Is it fun to watch our finest writers being witty with one another, as it’s fun to watch Federer play Nadal? There are similarities. They rise to the occasion. Lauren […]
This morning on Morning JoeNiall Ferguson compared General McChrystal to Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, a character uniquely immortalized by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s film (inspired […]
The New York Times cover story on John Updike’s archives reveals a writer who took care to develop and preserve his literary legacy. While an instinct for careful self-preservation is […]
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done. Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung. Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. […]
Lesley Stahl’s interview with Tara Parker-Pope on www.wowowow.com considers the myriad variations on a “good marriage;” what it means for a couple to argue well; and how we might all […]
This is inimitable Harper’s: contrasting the unbearable lightness of a medium (in this case, chat) with the often sublime depth of its subject (here, terror). One of the June issue’s […]
Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly has served as a style icon for decades, but the subtle complexities of Truman Capote’s heroine are less discussed. Today’s Times review of Sam Wasson’s new […]
Following on the somewhat silly Times cover piece on how distracted we all are, itself in opposition to Steven Pinker’s brilliant Times Op-Ed today, Walter Kirn’s contribution to The Atlantic’s […]
Would days spent reading Proust make us more attentive? The Times cover story today implies, Yes. New research argues against the opposing onslaught: video games, iPods; inevitable, en masse drift […]
Edmund White is one of the finest writers writing today, and the fact that he is writing a blog for the New York Review of Books—or, moreover, the fact that […]
Called “the hardest exam in the world” by the Telegragh, the entrance test necessary for those keen to spend graduate careers at All Souls, Oxford, included a celebrated element, the […]
New York’s excerpt of literary agent Bill Clegg’s memoir has the rush and pull of Jay McInernery’s Bright Lights, Big City. McInerney was celebrated for placing his action in the […]