The Common Reader

10/03/2026

oo, jacket weather

Why my interest in jackets? I cannot say, though others are taken by them too, a great tribe of jacket lovers. Of course, people are taken by all sorts of things—jeans, scarves, shoes, hats, suits, winter coats—but I have little interest in those things, except for their utility, and I own only ...

09/23/2026

Self-talk, the practice is called, and after decades of research, shrinks now admit it can be quite healthy. We learn to speak, after all, by jabbering away in our crib, speaking to no one in particular, catching the rhythm and intonation before we have the vocabulary.

09/23/2026

A.M. Gittlitz’s “Metropolitans” tells an alternative history of the New York Mets through the lens of class struggle. Extensive and educational, entertaining and exasperating, it employs the team as a vehicle of left-wing politics, while prodding at the cultural conservatism associated with the national pastime.

A.M. Gittlitz’s “Metropolitans,” tells an alternative history of the New York Mets through the lens of class struggle. Extensive and educational, entertaining and exasperating, it employs the team as a vehicle of left-wing politics, while prodding at the cultural conservatism associated with t...

09/23/2026

In “Warm Summers and Cold Winters,” Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their “inferiority complex.”

In “Warm Summers and Cold Winters,” Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their ....

09/23/2026

Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after “Native Son” have much to recommend them. Still, “Native Son” and “Black Boy” stand as his most enduring achievements. They capture the isolation from mainstream society that is the reality of many young Black people, in the time of Wright’s youth and in our time.

Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after “Native Son” have much to recommend them. Still, “Native Son” an...

09/23/2026

My mother would have said, “He’s a mess,” but Leon had a punk attitude, loved performative wildness, and was hugely capable. Is it a surprise what came next?

09/23/2026

Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center—dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent—really shore up democracy?

09/21/2026

Pay attention here, because you are about to lose your soul. What you are told, from this point forward, will largely depend on what someone who hopes to profit from you has decided you want to hear.

09/21/2026

I think more about what else in my social life I should see, ask, remember, and do, even when I can do little. Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald: Relationships are the brutality that sustains.

09/09/2026

Harder all the time

They say the laughter of the lamas results from relaxing into an acceptance that nothing lasts and that in fact there is nothing but change.