Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story In 1953, Roald Dahl published “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” a short story about an electrical engineer who secretly desires to be a writer. One day, after completing construction of the world’s…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story I’m going to be straight here: I love celebrities. I love thinking about them, reading about them, and writing about them. There’s also little that brings me more pleasure than spotting…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Little did I know, when, in December, 1979, I saw Steven Spielberg’s new film, “1941”—in 70-mm., on the curved screen of the Cinema 150 theatre, in Woodbury, Long Island— that I…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Sheldon PearceA contributor to Goings On since 2020. You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story One day in the mid-two-thousands, a teen-ager named Amy waited to hear the voice of God. She was sitting in a youth Bible-study group, surrounded by her peers, and losing patience.…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Ruben Bolling, who has drawn and written his intricate, incisive, shape-shifting weekly cartoon “Tom the Dancing Bug” for more than three decades, works best under the pressure of a deadline. “Years…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story How long can Emily possibly stay in Paris? The Netflix series in question débuted way back in October of 2020, in the benighted early days of the pandemic, when it seemed…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Watch “Incident.” The opening of Bill Morrison’s short film “Incident” is silent. Security footage shows a section of a Chicago street on what looks to be an ordinary summer afternoon. A…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story As incubators of pop stardom go, the Disney corporation has, rather unexpectedly, outlasted around two decades of dramatic shifts in the music industry. While “The Mickey Mouse Club”—a show that helped…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story I read “Middlemarch” for the first time during my sophomore year of college. I didn’t get it. Why would Dorothea, a young and intelligent woman, marry that annoying old man? How…