In Books, the California Promise and a Century of Reinvention
These titles track how the Golden State dream has been imagined, tested and rewritten across generations.
Novels
Author Lori Gold’s Favorite Novels to Read When Contemplating the Road Not Taken
Through very different lenses, these books examine the allure of what might have been.
David Foster Wallace on John Updike: A Legacy of One
In this archive piece, first published in 1997, a young David Foster Wallace takes a scalpel to John Updike and the postwar "Great Male Narcissists"—not over the prose, which he admired, but over a self-absorption so complete it left nothing behind worth inheriting. What happens when nothing gets passed down but the self?
