Nicholas Dames

2 months ago | harpers.org | Nicholas Dames

Discussed in this essay: The Deserters, by Mathias Énard. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. New Directions. 192 pages. $16.95. Mathias Énard’s The Deserters, his twelfth novel and sixth to be translated into English, bears the marks of its own interrupted composition with unusual vividness; historical events broke it open like the burst of a shell.

Mar 20, 2025 | nyra.nyc | Nicholas Dames

I have a picture, taken on March 14, 2020, of the exterior of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. A splash of sun is hitting the front patio tables where two couples are seated in light coats, but the honey locust is still bare. There’s not a mask in sight, and it might be any strangely warm early spring day this millennium, except that in the foreground, a pair of young women in Columbia-blue caps and gowns are standing hesitantly at a discreet distance from the door.

Dec 16, 2024 | nplusonemag.com | Nicholas Dames

Every cultural moment has its favorite, iconic reader types, its fantasies that become part of the self-awareness of the actual reader — of you, reading. The lineage is a long one, and you can usually file every new caricature under an old category: Pensive-Thoughtful; Furtive-Masturbatory; Intent (with scholarly and religious subvarieties); Eager-Youthful-Radical. In my own reading over the past year, a new category has seemed to open up: the Exhausted.

Sep 26, 2024 | pbk.org | Nicholas Dames |Mark Edmundson |Gregg Hecimovich |Sara Marcus

The ΦΒΚ Book Awards are administered in the following three, non-fiction categories: The Christian Gauss Award: Celebrates outstanding books in the field of literary scholarship or criticism. The Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science: Recognizes superior books by scientists written to illuminate aspects of science for a broad readership. The Ralph Waldo Emerson Award: Honors scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.

Jun 13, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Nicholas Dames

Start, as one tends to do in Rachel Cusk’s writing, with a house. It is not yours, but instead a farmhouse on the island property to which you have come as a renting vacationer. It has no obvious front door, and how you enter it, or whether you are welcome to do so, isn’t clear. You are, after all, only a visitor. Built out in haphazard fashion, the house seems both neglected and fussed over, and as a result slightly mad. A small door, once located, opens to reveal two rooms.