There’s an envelope full of cash on Larry Gopnik’s desk. He didn’t put it there. But he can guess who did. A student in Larry’s physics class has been begging him for a good grade. This money looks like a bribe. Nevertheless, when Larry goes seeking a confession, he’s given a confounding answer…. “Accept the…

As I write this, my father is busy with lumber, saws, and measuring tape. He’s making alterations to three dusty panels out of a backyard storage shed—pieces my grandfather once cut, painted, and linked together with hinges and pins. Dad’s doing this because I recently watched director Katsuhito Ishii’s 2004 film The Taste of Tea.…

My second favorite movie (my first is Gone with the Wind, which is embarrassing, but my tastes run to the lowbrow/popular) is The Third Miracle, a 1999 film starring Ed Harris. Its opening scene occurs during World War II, in an Eastern European country whose geography has been drawn and redrawn by the “will of…

So I may as well confess it here. I am a ritual watcher of sitcoms. When I am lonely, when I am hurt, when I am confused, ambivalent, frightened, insecure, I watch sitcoms. After a particularly debilitating break-up last fall, I spent a solid month watching nothing but episodes of The Office, which worked to…

Any project done in collaboration with twenty-one people is almost certain to be abysmal. Joint efforts are hard to manage, unless they’re in name only: a de facto leader and a troop of “partners” who can be told to shut up and get to it. Purpose, focus, execution—all rebel at too much participation, making “consensus…

Among oxymorons in common usage, one of the most popular is “victimless crime.” It would seem that if an act is criminal in nature, it must have a victim. If there is no victim, then the act cannot be a crime in any real sense. When the phrase is used, a larger point is being…

I think Reihan Salam is correct in dubbing the novels of the late Arthur C. Clarke “devotionals,” and his characters are indeed “wooden,” though that doesn’t take anything away from Clarke’s beguiling and seemingly unbounded imagination. This past summer, on whim, I picked up Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and thought it an impressive feat that…

All will be judged. Master of nuance and scruple, Pray for me and for all writers, living or dead: Because there are many whose works Are in better taste than their lives, because there is no end To the vanity of our calling, make intercession For the treason of all clerks.” —W. H. Auden, “At…

Other bloggers here at Good Letters seem to be establishing various narrative arcs—about music, fiction, etc. Well, it seems that I’m specializing in obituaries, this being my third in a row. Perhaps it’s my age, but in recent weeks I’ve felt the loss of several greats. Today I celebrate the great British actor, Paul Scofield,…

There is something wrong with the bourgeoisie, at least in American film, and there are no small or large charms that can possibly redeem the fault—discreet or otherwise. The middle class is caught in a maelstrom of pettiness, trapped in an imagined propriety, and made heir to a grubby little enterprise meant to stuff its…