Empty Spaces by Jordan Abel ABOUT 100 YEARS AGO, the Russian formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky argued that the purpose of art is “to make a stone stony.” He meant something like this: we are easily desensitized to everyday things like the little pebbles that litter our paths. We don’t truly see them, we just recognize […]
The poet Diane Seuss and I began a recent conversation by talking about the burdens of companionship—or, at least, how those burdens are manifested through affection for a pet. Seuss lost her dog Bear during the pandemic. When we spoke, by phone, she was at home in Michigan preparing her new dog, Stella—whom she described […]
Hit Man, the new film from director Richard Linklater, isn’t really about a hit man. It’s about the myth of the hit man, or at least “the hitman-for-hire.” Yes, occasionally, mafias and shady corporations and dictatorships do seem to have assassins to sic on their enemies. But the idea that any random person can track […]
Phonlamai Photo / Shutterstock When ChatGPT emerged a year and half ago, many professors immediately worried that their students would use it as a substitute for doing their own written assignments — that they’d click a button on a chatbot instead of doing the thinking involved in responding to an essay prompt themselves. But two […]
