Last year I wrote about dysfunctional narratives, a type of story that Charles Baxter first identified in the 1990s and which now seems overly prevalent today. He quoted a description of them by poet Marilynne Robinson, who also identified this type of narrative. She called it a “mean little myth”: One is born and in […]| Jim Nelson
Ben Davis of artnet news reports a story that sounds all-too-familiar these days: A little more than a week ago, I wrote a review of an art show by the artist and TikTok sensation Devon Rodriguez, best known for live drawing subway riders. He is, by some measures, the most famous artist in the world, […]| Jim Nelson
Kat Rosenfield at Unherd claims she knows why men are no longer wild: “Our sense of adventure died with Chris McCandless.” I last wrote about the mythology around Chris McCandless and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild in 2015. Rosenfield’s article motivated me to survey the situation once more. I won’t summarize here Krakauer’s book or […]| Jim Nelson