Smuggling literature behind the Iron Curtain took ingenuity. Think microscopic copies of Solzhenitsyn nestled in a baby’s diaper

Mencken is still relevant, but which Mencken? There were many — some confounding, some repellent, others bracing and hilarious 

Literary culture has changed, often for the worse. But that doesn't mean the world is also getting worse

thirdity: “That he had felt this despair, this deepest nausea, and yet had not succumbed to it, that the bird,...