As early as 1948, the Oscars sucked.

The secret diary of Nina Simone.

A profile of the designer, who died on February 19, 2019.

A profile of Toni Morrison.

A profile of photographer William Christenberry.

Discussions of character with the Late Show host.

How legends of the American music industry made millions off the work of Solomon Linda, a Zulu tribesman who wrote “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and died a pauper.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s new movie, inspired by Gerhard Richter, blurs the line between fiction and biography. Richter says that it goes too far.

On writing memoirs for the rich.

He helped build an artists’ utopia. Now he faces trial for 36 deaths there.

The making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.

One man’s quest to ride the strangest wave.

A 1993 profile of Ricky Jay, world-class sleight-of-hand conjurer who rarely performs (and never for children), historian of unusual entertainments and confidence scams, bibliomaniac.

Stan Lee supercharged Marvel Comics into one of the most important cultural forces on the planet. But how much credit does he really deserve?

I used to believe the art world was at war with itself, that money was fighting art and vice versa. But I’ve been living in my own ambivalence about things for a decade now, or more, and I’m starting to think it’s not a war but a new equilibrium state, defined by that ambivalence.

Making ends meet in Iowa City.

A conversation between Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and William Burroughs.

It didn't matter if these clubs were in Cleveland, Portland, Corpus Christi or Baton Rouge—if it was a nightclub, the owners were the Mob. For a good forty years the Mob controlled American show business.

Should art be a battleground for social justice?

On growing up, writing, and succumbing to bullshit.

“The palace doors flew open. It was him. It was Rick Owens, the American-born designer known to his fans as the Lord of Darkness.”

On the relationship between rivalry and creativity.

Frankie Manning was the greatest swing dancer alive. Then the world forgot about him.

How a ragtag group of artists launched an art-entertainment empire.

“The ‘hard’–science fiction writers dismiss everything except, well, physics, astronomy, and maybe chemistry. Biology, sociology, anthropology—that’s not science to them, that’s soft stuff. They’re not that interested in what human beings do, really. But I am. I draw on the social sciences a great deal. I get a lot of ideas from them, particularly from anthropology. When I create another planet, another world, with a society on it, I try to hint at the complexity of the society I’m creating, instead of just referring to an empire or something like that.”