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Bernard Malamud, a Jewish American writer, emerged in the 1950s as an important voice in American literature. Unlike his contemporaries Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, Malamud focused on the lives of working-class Jews in Brooklyn and the Bronx, imbuing their experiences with transformative powers. His stories, such as "The Jewbird" and "The Magic Barrel," employ magic realism to convey the struggles and resilience of the Jewish experience. Malamud's work explores themes of survival, emotional deprivation, and the longing for a meaningful inner life. The Library of America has recently published the third and final volume of his collected writings. [Extracted from the article]

Elsa Morante's propulsive 1940s saga of women's lives, ''Lies and Sorcery,'' brings its penetrating insight to a new generation. LIES AND SORCERY, by Elsa Morante. Translated by Jenny McPhee. Elsa [...]

INTERVIEWS BY DIANE M. BOLZ, SARAH BREGER, LILLY GELMAN, GEORGE E. JOHNSON, AMY E. SCHWARTZ, FRANCIE WEINMAN SCHWARTZ, ELLEN WEXLER AND LAURENCE WOLFF Read more interviews at momentmag.com/community Human beings [...]

This document contains three letters from readers responding to articles in the Nation. The first letter discusses the cost of psychotherapy and the class advantage of access to psychedelic psychotherapies. The writer suggests that legalization, price regulation, and insurance coverage could help prevent profit-driven abuse. The second letter discusses the US's relationship with Saudi Arabia and its involvement in the Yemen conflict. The writer criticizes the Biden administration for not following through on its promises to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. The third letter responds to a review of a memoir about transitioning from male to female. The writer expresses disappointment that the memoir focuses on surface beauty and asks for more insight into the experiences of living as a woman in a society characterized by inequality. The reviewer responds, acknowledging the need for diverse stories and discussions about privilege. [Extracted from the article]

THE EMPATHY DIARIESA MemoirBy Sherry Turkle Sherry Turkle is a professor of science and technology at M.I.T. who has written many books arguing that our obsessive devotion to devices is [...]

SONTAG Her Life and Work By Benjamin Moser A man who'd been a classmate in grade school remembered being accosted one day in the yard by Susan Sontag, then around [...]

The Mermaid and the Minotaur. By Dorothy Dinnerstein New York, NY; Other Press, 2021, 336 pp., $18.99, paperback Reviewed by Vivian Gornick When Dorothy Dinnerstein's The Mermaid and the Minotaur [...]

GREEK TO ME Adventures of the Comma Queen By Mary Norris Mary Norris's ''Greek to Me'' is one of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have [...]

UPSTATE By James Wood 214 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. An Englishman in his late 60s, a property developer unused to introspection, is informed by one of his two [...]

Both parents served as pastors to a number of churches in upstate New York, and that's where Eastman and her three brothers, of whom Max was the youngest, grew up. As Amy Aronson's informative new biography, Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life, tells us, the passion for social reform was mother's milk to Eastman. Crystal, he insisted, was in "work accidents" for social justice, Bennie for the insurance fees. Aronson's biography pays Crystal Eastman the enormous respect of presenting her as a woman of parts in whom we see fused the best of American leftism with the best of Christian compassion and the near best of modernist courage. [Extracted from the article]

Reawakened Rage By Vivian Gornick What is never properly understood by those who do not experience it is how deep the rage over inequality goes once it is made conscious, [...]

AT THE STRANGERS' GATE Arrivals in New York By Adam Gopnik 253 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95. There are writers who, given even as small an amount of time as [...]