Ryan Ruby

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Ryan Ruby

PERFECTION, by Vincenzo Latronico. Translated by Sophie Hughes. One of the more trenchant portraits of expat life in contemporary Berlin I've encountered in the 11 years I've lived there is "Perfection," by the Rome-born writer Vincenzo Latronico.

Nov 21, 2024 | lithub.com | Ryan Ruby

Ryan Ruby on the Need to Shake Up Our Modern Era of Clean Professionalization Alexander Pope is hardly an unknown quantity.

Nov 19, 2024 | sevenstories.com | Ryan Ruby |Don Mee Choi |Jeff Dolven

Literary critic Ryan Ruby uncovers the secret history of poetry in a mock-academic verse essay filled with wit and wisdom. Prophet. Entertainer. Courtier. Criminal. Revolutionary. Critic. Scholar. Nobody. Epic in sweep, Context Collapse is the secret history of the poet—from Bronze Age Greece and Renaissance Italy to the cafés of Grub Street and the Latin Quarter, from the creative writing departments of the American Midwest to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley.

Oct 1, 2024 | libertiesjournal.com | Ryan Ruby |Jake Harrison

Act One: Berlin and Prague Immanuelkirchstrasse 29 is a short walk from my house in Berlin. The five-story corner apartment went up in the early years of the twentieth century, when Prenzlauer Berg was a mixed-class district of workers and upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants. Like most buildings in the neighborhood, the façade suffered damage in the Second World War and was neglected during the four decades it stood in the capital of the German Democratic Republic.

Sep 27, 2024 | newleftreview.org | Ryan Ruby

The title of Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, refers to a move in chess, more commonly known as a Zwischenzug, in which a player delays a favourable move, such as the capture of a piece, in order to obtain an extra advantage in position. Scattered throughout are quotations from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. The first is to be found in the epigraph: ‘But don’t you feel grief now?