The Common Reader offers the best in reviews, articles and essays engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
Joined October 2014
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May 19
“NUREMBURG”: HOLOCAUST AS MELODRAMA In the end, the only thing to be done with a movie like this is to throw it to the wolves of Reddit.
commonreader.wustl.edu/nurem…
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AI TARGETS WRITERS AND EDITORS A few days ago, a man in Memphis messaged me by LinkedIn to ask if I was the person who had offered to help him market his book. When I said no, he showed me the email that offered to make his novel a smash hit.
commonreader.wustl.edu/ai-ta…
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Apr 25
AI AND THE INHABITED BODY AI does not (yet) understand the mysteries, perspectives, uncertainties, and feelings—the experience itself—of inhabiting a body in the physical world.
commonreader.wustl.edu/ai-an…
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Apr 13
‘GO BAGS’ IN RELATIONSHIPS The impulse is to think that someone who makes plans for something else also helps bring it about. That fantasy does not seem to be doing us much good as a body politic.
commonreader.wustl.edu/go-ba…
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WHEN I SAT WITH NALA DOG WHILE HER FAMILY WAS IN TEL AVIV You know how in family obituaries they sometimes single someone out as a “special aunt,” or “special cousin” or “special nephew”? I had that kind of special relationship with a dog one time.
commonreader.wustl.edu/when-…
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STRANGE DAYS AT THE SOCCER JOCK PARTY APARTMENT I could imagine generations of soccer players moving into this apartment with a coffeemaker, a fondue pot, a meat thermometer, what have you, then moving out and leaving it all behind.
commonreader.wustl.edu/stran…
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Mar 24
The new debut record by American Pirates of Bloomington, Indiana, “What a Friend,” artfully blends so many different kinds of folk music that it comes across as an anthology or a variety show, yet with kindred themes and a unifying sound.
commonreader.wustl.edu/ameri…
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Mar 20
I asked a friend which of two things she thought true: Are our lives narratives? Or are they many quick stories/events/incidents that pop up, one damn thing after another, which are tied together only by the meanings we assign?
commonreader.wustl.edu/are-y…
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Saint Louis Art Museum’s Art in Bloom, now in its twentieth year, is the museum’s most popular event: a weekend centered on pairing specific works of art iwith flower arrangements that reimagine them.
commonreader.wustl.edu/best-…
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Feb 23
Cartoons are one of my favorite things on Instagram, especially when they touch on humor, confusion, sadness, practical philosophy, and cultural critique.
commonreader.wustl.edu/carto…
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30 Dec 2025
URBAN FISHING AT CHRISTMAS Jefferson Lake is 14 feet at its deepest but holds Largemouth Bass, Channel Cats, Crappie, Carp, Topminnows, Golden Shiners, and Bluegill. Being a non-fisherman and non-city dweller, I was surprised by the variety.
commonreader.wustl.edu/urban…
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16 Dec 2025
CHRISTKINDLMARKET IN CHICAGO A HOLIDAY FAVORITE A drive from St. Louis this week through the windswept fields and windmill farms of Illinois was pleasant, as was the cinnamon-scented fellow at the front desk of a River North hotel in Chicago.
commonreader.wustl.edu/chris…
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11 Dec 2025
IN SMALL-TOWN INDIANA, LAM RUNS A LOST AND FOUND FOR THE FORGOTTEN AMONG US If you have ever cared for an addict, you know the desperate feeling of no easy solutions. commonreader.wustl.edu/on-th…
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5 Dec 2025
ANATOMICAL SPECIMENS SHARE A SCONE Wanting answers, we create reductions: I am. She was. The administration will.
commonreader.wustl.edu/anato…
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7 Nov 2025
DEVOTION TO AUTHENTICITY I treasure memories of tomahawk-throwing at Fort de Chartres. It helped me set up my young mind to think of this part of the Midwest as perpetually colonial and the West as something for the future.
commonreader.wustl.edu/devot…
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24 Oct 2025
OF LIVING ALONE Of course, living alone has few rules—one of its upsides, usually—and nobody said you have to be that quiet.
commonreader.wustl.edu/of-li…
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17 Oct 2025
JOHN CANDY, LOST SON Candy’s friends and family appear, one by one, to testify to his overall good nature, sweetness, and easy laughter. Often, though, something pulls at these claims.
commonreader.wustl.edu/john-…
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9 Oct 2025
LUCKY PRESCIENCE IN ‘ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER’ Paul Thomas Anderson’s films always have dark humor, but I have to think he may have felt a greater need to signal satire back then, which plays a little unevenly now. commonreader.wustl.edu/lucky…
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3 Oct 2025
FOUND OBJECTS: MYSELF I looked and looked. It was like looking at another part of myself.
commonreader.wustl.edu/found…
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19 Sep 2025
TIPTOEING AROUND OUR STORIES In the best of times it is impossible to know other people fully. Even if we wish to act in good faith, it is hard to express to others who we think we are—and we may not know who we are.
commonreader.wustl.edu/tipto…
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