TOM MCCARTHY’S 2005 debut, “Remainder”, managed what the jackets of so many first novels promise: a fresh and—in this case—unsettling take on contemporary life. It is about a brain-damaged man who marshals millions of pounds and a troupe of actors, consiglieres and forensic experts to reconstruct a memory. It is an intentionally confusing and difficult [...]

This month editorial control of the Paris Review, a pre-eminent American literary magazine, changed hands from Philip Gourevitch to Lorin Stein, now a former senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux (and an occasional contributor to this magazine). While at FSG, Stein made his name finding and refining such authors as Elif Batuman, Lydia Davis, [...]

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Couch For a Long Time, 2009 Sleet spattered over VIPs queuing outside for the opening of the Whitney Biennial on February 23rd. We suffered in silence, in darkness, our conversations drowned by the monastic groaning of an outdoor installation that cast an eerie blue hue. Dumpling trucks prowled and rogue cameramen interviewed [...]

As an X-certificate actress, Sasha Grey perfected a thrashing sensuality far more cathartic and psychologically fraught than her moaning, grunting contemporaries. Her smouldering looks and unapologetic public appearances snared millions of mostly male fans and turned the teen porn performer into a cult figure.

BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT – Myrtle Ave. Not every nexus needs glamour but where Myrtle and Wycoff Avenues meet there is – of a seedy sort. Where the M- and L-lines cross, where Ridgewood, Queens slopes down to meet Bushwick, Brooklyn, lies the densest concentration of beauty supply stores in New York City. Here, for the [...]

The Whitney Biennial is something of a coming-out party for mostly young and mostly unknown contemporary artists working in America. To announce the much-anticipated list of artists selected for this year’s show, which opens in New York on February 25th, the two curators, Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, have supplemented the traditional press release with [...]

America’s east coast is peppered with architectural behemoths better suited to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” than the leafy habitat of the tufted Maine Coon cat. Parts of northern New Jersey look like industrial-age Manchester, and the towering girded glass cubes of I.M. Pei’s Jacob K. Javits convention centre in New York City could house a [...]

Charles Saatchi has all the makings of a James Bond villain. He is masterfully powerful with a mottled international background: born in Baghdad, raised in Hampstead, he’s Jewish and obsessed with brash American culture. Saatchi clawed his way up through the advertising industry, creating an empirewith his brother that swayed elections (favouring Margaret Thatcher) and sold [...]

IGGY POP’S AMBIENT, LITERARY JAZZ ALBUM Iggy Pop, the gravelly godfather of punk rock, has mellowed since his howling heyday in the 1970s. But his latest album, Les Préliminaires, would seem almost inconceivable to fans of the smack-addled screamer’s early work with The Stooges. Once famous for guzzling gallons of bourbon on stage, rubbing broken [...]

Why Attack Hotels? Take the population of New York City, double it, cram it into an archipelago half its size, and turn up the temperature: you get Mumbai, a city whose luxury hotels are its best escape. These air-conditioned comfort bubbles, far above the sweltering, seething masses, afford the world-weary traveler or Indian executive access [...]