Harper's Magazine

10/30/2025

“I’ve been on the receiving end of violence more than once; sometimes I’ve had to submit to it, sometimes I’ve successfully fought back and escaped it. Because of my bodily experience, I’ve become attuned to subtle social cues of possible violence: a look in the eyes, a tightening of the jaw, a way of moving or of speaking that precedes rage or cold, deliberate cruelty. I’m aware of its presence in a way that perhaps most people in my social strata are not. I have a reliable (I hope!) sense of when to be afraid and when somebody’s just loudly venting or screwing around.”⁠
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Mary Gaitskill in an essay that appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of The Point.

http://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/harms-way-mary-gaitskill-violence/

10/30/2025

“What happens when these children—the 40 percent of fourth graders who lack basic reading comprehension—become parents themselves? If they never develop the habit of reading or even the basic facility, will they read to their own children? What happens when—whether through fatigue, indifference, or inability—the transmission of reading culture as we’ve known it comes to an end? What, in short, do we lose when we don’t read to our children at night?”⁠
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Harper’s Magazine editor Christopher Carroll on bedtime stories and the literacy crisis in November’s Easy Chair.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/moon-magic-christopher-carroll-literacy-rate-parenthood/

10/29/2025

“It feels strangely radical to have the sunset as one’s entire agenda. It passes through a dozen stages, from fiery orange to astral lavender, a menagerie of photons that left the solar corona eight minutes ago and banked their way into me. All the while my light meter is slowly ticking down, from a few hundred lux to just dozens. Finally, the color is gone, except for some peaceful blue bands along the skyline. It seems clear that we’re built for this slow fade, rather than lights-out at eleven.”⁠
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Rowan Jacobsen reports from the Sonoran Desert on artificial light and the pursuit of a good night’s sleep.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/chasing-photons-rowan-jacobsen-sleep-artificial-light/ ⁠
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All photographs from Arizona, September 2025, by Michael Lundgren for Harper’s Magazine © The artist

10/28/2025

“Abel Ferrara is also—and one can lose sight of this fact when focusing on his public persona—one of the most consistently interesting, unpredictable, and vital American filmmakers of the past half century, a model of hardheaded integrity, independence, insubordination, and never-say-die hustle for generations of cineastes and cinephiles who chafe at the confines of the decision-by-committee corporate filmmaking that has long diluted our national cinema.”⁠
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Nick Pinkerton reviews Abel Ferrara’s memoir, Scene.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/a-rakes-progress-nick-pinkerton-american-filmmakers/
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Photograph: Abel Ferrara, 1995 © Rick McGinnis

10/27/2025

It Was Still Far Away, a painting by Sasha Gordon, whose work is on view through November 1 at David Zwirner, in New York City © The artist. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York

10/24/2025

From the November Harper’s Index.

https://harpers.org/harpers-index/?issue_month=11&issue_year=2025

10/24/2025

“No one, besides maybe Neil Postman, could have predicted the formation of an international po*******hy cult. But the gooners’ rise does, in retrospect, possess a certain inevitability. Anyone paying attention to online p**n’s evolution over the preceding twenty years could sense, in its brain-melting variety and abundance, the blueprint for a new kind of person, a new relationship to human sexuality. In my own lifetime, I have seen incredible advances in the world of po*******hy. When I was a boy, there were still p**n magazines; fathers hid them on high shelves. You stood on stools and gawked at them in a state of mortal terror. But by the time I started college, in the late Aughts, the foundations of our present p**n environment were firmly established. Widespread broadband internet had enabled the rise of the so-called tube sites: platforms like Pornhub, which streamed untold numbers of clips free of charge. Then came the smartphones, transforming every toilet stall into a potential p**n theater. The very air, suddenly, was misted with po*******hy.”⁠
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Daniel Kolitz reports from the GoonVerse on loneliness, p**n’s next frontier, and the dream of endless ma********on. ⁠
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Illustration by Melcher Oosterman ().

https://https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-p**n-ma********on-loneliness/

10/23/2025

“In February, Death descended on 1425 Old Sunset Trail in the community of Santa Fe Summit in the city of Santa Fe and it stayed and stayed. It stayed even after—for most intents and purposes—it had left.”⁠
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Joy Williams on “incommensurable time” and the last days of Gene Hackman.
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Illustration by Lauren Simkin Berke.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/one-four-two-five-old-sunset-trail-joy-williams-death/

10/23/2025

“In an era of declining trust, industry collapse, and technological disruption, does the media, as we’ve historically understood it, have a future? What essential functions does professional journalism serve that cannot be replaced by other forms of information gathering and dissemination? And why, finally, do Americans view the media with such skepticism?”⁠
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Jelani Cobb, Taylor Lorenz, Jack Shafer, and Max Tani address establishment media’s credibility crisis in a conversation, moderated by editor Christopher Carroll, that took place on July 23, 2025. Read more of the forum at the link in our bio. ⁠
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Collages by Mark Harris. Source images: Silhouette © Magalí Druscovich/Reuters/Redux; building © David Zanzinger/Alamy; radio dial and children watching television © Classic Stock/Alamy; newsboy courtesy Lewis Wickes Hine, Library of Congress; paper press © Luisa Fumi/Alamy; front page of the New York Times, July 21, 1969 © magnez2/iStock; printing press, Times of London, 1827 © Lebrecht Alamy; microphone © Olga Yastremska/Alamy

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/why-doesnt-anyone-trust-the-media-jelani-cobb-taylor-lorenz-jack-shafer-max-tani-establishment-journalism/

10/22/2025

In our November issue: a forum on the establishment media’s crisis of trust, Rowan Jacobsen on a good night’s sleep, Daniel Kolitz on p**n’s new frontier, Joy Williams on Gene Hackman’s last days, Nick Pinkerton on Abel Ferrara’s new memoir, and a story by David Wingrave.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/

10/20/2025

Tubo to Uma no heya, a painting (gouache, gofun (colours based on calcium carbonate), on Japanese h**p paper) by Tomoya Kato, whose work is on view through October 25 at Bernheim, in Zurich © The artist ⁠
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10/19/2025

“There were mothers who didn’t like their babies sometimes. People would throw shoes and point their thumbs down while booing.”

From Laura Vazquez’s () The Endless Week, which was published last month by Dorothy ().

October 2025 Issue [Readings] Birthing Channel Download PDF Adjust Share by Laura Vazquez, From The Endless Week, which was published last month by Dorothy. Translated from the French by Alex Niemi. Every week, the grandmother watched a show in which women gave birth. The women would lie down in fro...