Curated playlist

20th-century American essayists

Stephen KingA minivan hit Stephen King on a Maine road in June 1999. A dog in the back distracted the driver.
Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died in 1937 virtually unknown to readers. His monsters later became global touchstones.
Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
Ron PaulRon Paul delivered the Tejano singer Selena as a baby. He was a Texas obstetrician before he ran for president.
Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. Thompson's Gonzo style began as a Kentucky Derby deadline scramble. He mailed pages ripped from his notebook.
John CageJohn Cage once had a pianist play nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Audience noise became the music.
Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died four months before Blade Runner opened. He never saw the film that made his name famous.
David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace wrote a novel that Time magazine placed among the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. That book was Infinite Jest, and it reached readers in 1996. Years later, the critic David Ulin wrote…
Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died hours after reading his poems aloud in a Vienna hotel.
James BaldwinThe FBI file on James Baldwin ran to 1,884 pages, gathered from 1960 until the early 1970s. In that era of surveillance of American writers, agents filled 276 pages on Richard Wright and 110 on Truman Capote. Henry Miller rated just nine.…
Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
Ayn RandWhen Ayn Rand died in New York City on the 6th of March 1982, her funeral included a six-foot floral arrangement shaped like a dollar sign. The tribute suited a woman who had turned self-interest into a moral code. She was born Alisa…
Ralph EllisonA 1967 fire destroyed more than 300 pages of Ralph Ellison's second novel. He never finished it.
Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.
Jonathan FranzenA gate-crasher once pulled novelist Jonathan Franzen's glasses off his face. He jokingly demanded $100,000 in 2010.
Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman turned to economics because psychohistory was fiction. Asimov's novels inspired him.
Michael BloombergMichael Bloomberg was on the ballot in New York City's Republican mayoral primary when voting opened on the morning of the 11th of September 2001. Later that day, officials postponed the primary because of the attacks on the city. The…
Anthony BourdainAnthony Bourdain was filming an episode of his series No Reservations in Beirut in July 2006 when a war cut the shoot short. The Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out after his crew had recorded only a few hours of footage. What the producers…
Claude ShannonClaude Shannon built a mechanical mouse that learned its way through a maze. He named the 1950 machine Theseus.
Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
Jerry FodorPhilosopher Jerry Fodor argued that thinking works like a language inside the brain. He called it Mentalese.
Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt's name is printed on journals, schools, scholarly prizes, humanitarian prizes, think-tanks and street signs. It also appears on stamps and monuments. She was born Johanna Arendt, and she grew into one of the most influential…
Hilary PutnamHilary Putnam invented a leading theory of the mind, then spent years taking it apart.
Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt was stunned when universities sought experts in "New Historicism," a phrase he coined.
Robert ReichRobert Reich stands 4 feet 11 inches tall, and he has spent his working life arguing with people who hold far more power than he does. Born on the 24th of June 1946, he became an American lawyer, professor, author and political…
Christopher HitchensOn the 8th of October 2011, Christopher Hitchens collected the Richard Dawkins Award at the Texas Freethought Convention. It was his final public appearance. Christopher Eric Hitchens, a British and American author and journalist, had been…
John RawlsJohn Rawls, an American philosopher, wrote a book of roughly 600 pages that protesters held up in front of government officials at Tiananmen Square in 1989. It was a dense academic treatise called A Theory of Justice. More than 300,000…
Angela DavisAngela Davis was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, then acquitted by an all-white jury.
Cornel WestYale punished Cornel West for a protest arrest by canceling his 1987 spring leave. He then commuted to Paris to teach.
Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford argued the clock, not the steam engine, drove the Industrial Revolution. He never finished college.
George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…