Sam Sacks
@ssacks
Fiction critic at the Wall Street Journal ( editor at Open Letters Review, formerly Open Letters Monthly ( sam_sacks [at] hotmail
"Here in the Villa, around that chapel of Canopus where his cult is celebrated in Egyptian fashion, I have encouraged the establishment of various pleasure pavilions" (Marguerite Yourcenar). We saw no pleasure pavilions on today's visit to Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, but it was exceptional even so.
I also like Versailles, but that's because I went during Covid and the place was so empty they let my 2-year-old slip the rope and sprint around the Hall of Mirrors.
Now I've received this social media consultant's email intended for @anathanwest.bsky.social. Honored and esteemed by the company of writers the rogue AI bot is placing me in.
Here is Alden Whitman, looking delighted by the chance to eulogize your death
"I have a recollection of Graham Greene meeting me at the door of his Paris flat and saying, 'Oh, so you're the young man who's come to write my obituary, are you?'" From yesterday's unnecessary used bookshop purchase.
Just received an email intended for Vivian Gornick pitching me on opportunities to boost my social media presence
Whatever her reputation as a reviewer may be, this 1988 collection of Michiko Kakutani's artist profiles (Mary McCarthy, David Byrne, John Gielgud, etc) is excellent. Apropos of having just referred to it again, something I do more often than I would have guessed.
I love you, dear little dove, but you need to make your nest somewhere else.
I'm a park bench plaque connoisseur and this is the first one I've ever seen in code. If there's an Alan Turing out there who can decrypt it, let me know.
I'm very happy to now own this print of one of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz's fabric pictures. Krinitz embroidered the story of her Holocaust survival--she and her sister hid at a farm in Poland--in 36 extraordinary stitched panels. They are displayed at the American Visionary Art museum in Baltimore.
'What are “nonchalant Balliol voices”? What’s a “three pip emma”? Why is “General ffolliott” not a misprint? What does “napoo finny” mean, and is it even English?' Always a delight to find writing by Stephen Akey, here on the strange argot of High Modernism hedgehogreview.com/issues/human...
It has been a proud week for my father, who on Friday was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. (His bio, for those interested in Leishmania parasites: www.nasonline.org/directory-en...). Here is a picture of him with Dr. Fauci when he received tenure in 1986.
I love this Royal Paulownia tree growing out of the wall in Morningside Park
A striking trio of books for this weekend’s WSJ Fiction Chronicle, including an astounding work of Zola-esque naturalism by the Tamil writer Jeyamohan www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
Slate's two-sentence "explainer" headlines have always been pretty obnoxious, but the main problem is that they end up repeating the same formulas
I don't know from houseplants, but I really recommend this ZZ plant (short for Zamioculcas zamiifolia). Ours has thrived beautifully despite, or maybe because of, the most minimal care.
At On the Seawall, Cory Oldweiler writes an evocative introduction to the "Bergmanesque" postwar Swedish writer Birgitta Trotzig, who is getting the revival treatment from Archipelago Books in Saskia Vogel translations www.ronslate.com/on-queen-a-n...
Much fine lit-crit elsewhere on the internets. At the Hudson Review, Robert Archambeau has a fun, meaty piece on the kinships between Fitzgerald's Gatsby and Petronius's Trimalchio, the most "honest representation of an individual" in all of Roman literature. hudsonreview.com/2025/10/trim...
Podhoretz's literary journalism is a lot of fun, by the way--opinionated and rangy in that omnivorous postwar fashion
Here's a brief thread of the fiction that has stayed with me most in 2025, a year in which I reviewed exactly 100 books, and was more grateful than ever for the chance to do so. First, these are screenshots of the three brilliant novels that made the WSJ Best Books list. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
A recent used bookshop find I couldn't pass up. Avon did this rounded corners thing for a few years in the '60s. An article at the time claims (maybe jokingly) that it was to prevent dog-earing. I've seen Henry Roth's 'Call It Sleep' in this version. Show me yours if you have one!
"Dickens is infinitely greater than his critics." True, but in this case the critic comes very close. Remembering John Carey's work this morning by rereading one of my favorite of his books.