Toy Story

Barbie's now a movie star. Can Mattel gin up plots for Hot Wheels and UNO?

Night of the Happy Bodies

I like parties where you sit around and talk to people. But I love parties where you dance and make noise with people. This may seem strange for a writer, but I can find spoken words overly complex and unwieldy, especially in the fast-moving currents of a party.

The Kitchen God

I tried peeling the kitchen wall with my fingernails, but that didn't work, so I pressed hard with my fingers and a flake of the \"stucco,\" which is what I call it, fell off.

Killing Dickens

Why I wrote a historical novel.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT: AFTER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION- Any proper obituary for affirmative action (1961-2023) in higher education would be obliged to note that it had been in decline for years before it met its ultimate demise last week. The policy had weathered successive legal challenges dating back to the nineteen-seventies. It was often difficult to tell whether the effect of these suits was to inspire more nuanced and legally sustainable approaches for insuring diversity or to better define the target opponents were aiming at. As with other untimely passings, the scale of what has been lost is difficult to assess in the moment. But not entirely impossible.

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Boasting Thurston Moore as a record-label honcho and having shared bills with Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, Big Joanie feels like an honorary member of an indie world of yore.

Cold Case

The final season of "Happy Valley."

Role of a Lifetime

Why Sarah Jessica Parker keeps playing Carrie Bradshaw.

WITCH HUNT

Juliet Stevenson stars in \"The Doctor.\"

MAN CHILD

Raising a boy in a world of male monsters.

YOU GOOD?

Aristotle's guide to human flourishing.

LETTER FROM CHENGDU - A DOUBLE EDUCATION

Educating American twins in China revealed two disparate systems, despite a history of mutual influence.

A TRILLION LITTLE PIECES

How plastics are poisoning us.

THE ANCIENT WORLD DIVINE COMEDY

The godlike aspirations and all too human last moments of Roman emperors.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT HAZY DAYS The masks came out again this month-only, contrary to the COVID years, New Yorkers donned them outdoors and slid them off when they stepped inside. As smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires drifted across the northern U.S. border, engulfing much of the eastern seaboard in an orange miasma, it sent New York's air quality to the worst levels on record, and, at one point, the worst in the world. Planes were grounded, outdoor activities were cancelled, and patients with asthma and other respiratory conditions filled emergency rooms. Senator Chuck Schumer called on the Biden Administration to send more American firefighters up North to stave off a \"summer of smoke.\"

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

The Jamaican-born artist Ebony G. Patterson’s installation “. . . things come to thrive . . . in the shedding . . . in the molting . . . ,” at the New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx (through Oct. 22), is the result of a four-year residency. Dotting the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and its lawn are glittering black-foam vultures and glass sculptures of feet and plants, just some of the pieces with which Patterson probes the garden’s surface. “How do I get people to look beneath the landscape?” she asks. “There’s a secret that’s being concealed.”

What Am I Without You?

Two lives merged by immigration and illness.

The Pandemic Generation

Remote school was devastating for many kids. How can they get back on track?

NOWHERESVILLE

\"Asteroid City\" and \"Maggie Moore(s).\"

LONDON CALLING

\"Operation Mincemeat,\" \"Guys and Dolls,\" and \"The Motive and the Cue.\"

OUT OF PLACE

Megan Fernandes's map of desire.

NOW YOU SEE IT

The curious allure of the heist.

Status in flux

For two years, no one travelled. Countries closed their borders to other countries that had closed their borders first.

BITTER PILL

Dying patients wanted access to a new drug of uncertain benefit. But hasty approval comes at a cost.

SHOW OF SUPPORT

Is the Army Tactical Bra ready for deployment?

READING BODY LANGUAGE LIKE THE EXPERTS

We can understand so much about W people are communicating by simply paying attention to their physical cues. Let's say that you're walking down the street and pass a guy who raises his arm in the air, then swings a knife at you. Body-language-wise, he wants to stab you.

Thursday

Fiction

DANCE OF DEATH

“The Comeuppance,” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

SONIC SIGNATURES

The unique sound worlds of Salvatore Sciarrino and Kaija Saariaho.

MORTAL COIL

Loving and letting go in Lorrie Moore's new novel.