Ingrid Köst

A hundred years ago, Virginia Woolf published her second most famous essay, “On Being Ill.” Written during a prolonged bout of illness the previous fall, Woolf asked why sickness—an unavoidable feature of human experience—is represented so rarely and inadequately in literature. “It becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature,” she wrote. Now Hermione Hoby writes, “The intervening century has qualified, if hardly refuted, the claim that sickness is neglected in fiction.” Hoby assesses how writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Albert Camus, Lena Dunham, and more have portrayed sickness in literature—and why we’re still struggling to put physical suffering into words: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/td…

Whatever book you pick up, it’s likely to make you feel better—maybe even a whole lot better. “In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks,” Ceridwen Dovey writes, in “Can Reading Make You Happier?,” which was published in 2015. Dive into the research behind the therapeutic effect of books: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Wv…

Whatever book you pick up, it’s likely to make you feel better—maybe even a whole lot better. “In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks,” Ceridwen Dovey writes, in “Can Reading Make You Happier?,” which was published in 2015. Dive into the research behind the therapeutic effect of books: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Wv…

The tasks students are given during the year—homework, essays, tests—are not the point of the instruction. These types of work have historically been a means to help build and improve upon skills, but now large language models and the long shadow of the job market have disrupted a centuries-old educational paradigm, according to Dan Rockmore, a mathematics and computer science professor at Dartmouth. “The stick is broken and the carrot has lost its taste.” His solution? Focus on how to create classrooms that make the process feel worth doing for its own sake, something akin to replicating the feeling and fulfillment that comes from exercising. Read more: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/0Q…

On this date, 81 years ago, George Orwell’s satirical fable “Animal Farm” was published. According to Edmund Wilson, it told the story of the progress—or backsliding—of the Russian Revolution through a group of cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry who decide to expel their master and run his farm for themselves. “Mr. Orwell has worked out his theme with a simplicity, a wit, and a dryness that are closer to La Fontaine and Gay,” Wilson writes. Revisit his review, from the archive: newyorker.com/magazine/1946/…