When Lusting for a Young Woman Doesn't Work, Write an Opera

How composer Leos Janacek's obsession with a 25-year-old woman (when he was in his 60s) renewed his creativity and inspired Katya Kabanova.

Wagner's Operas Saved My Uncle's Life and Reordered the Tectonics of His Psyche

Wagner's Operas Saved My Uncle's Life and Reordered the Tectonics of His Psyche

He was a Painter Who Showed Me the Beauty and Dangers of Being an Other

My Year with Stage IV Cancer

How Listening to Music and Fighting with Susan Sontag Helped Me Cope with Chemo

A Year with Stage IV Cancer

Karen Russell, Adam Haslett, and Five Other Writers Each Review One Essay in Charles D'Ambrosio's Brilliant New Book

Charles D'Ambrosio's Dome-Blowingly Beautiful Essays

Loitering Is the Best Essay Collection of the Year, So The Stranger Asked Karen Russell, Adam Haslett, Rebecca Brown, and Four Others Writers to Each Review One Thing in It

So You're Thinking of Joining a Cult

The Desire to Belong When You're Young Can Be Dangerous

A&P: Irony Is a Survival Tactic

Irony Is a Survival Tactic

As Someone Who Tried to Give Up Irony, I Can Tell You—It Doesn’t Work

What the Creator of the Atom Bomb Said to the Composer of Pines of Rome

United States of Anxiety

The floods, the California wildfires, and the violence in Chicago are nothing compared to what the slow-motion disaster of a crumbling economy is doing to us. A personal account of a breakdown.

1976

Vatican Condemns Queers

Half Rack

I Lost My Breast and My Nephew to Cancer, but Not My Bullshit Detector

Waiting Periods

Legislatures Across the Country Have Approved Waiting Periods for Gun Purchases and Abortions; We'd Like to Propose These Queer-Specific Waiting Periods