Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik, a staff writer, has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1986. His books include “ The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery.”
Read more on The New Yorker →48 picks · 1946–2023
Featured Picks
dept. of returns ·
After a year of tragedy and uncertainty, New Yorkers are revisiting old haunts—and sharing them with new faces. Adam Gopnik writes about the post-pandemic awakening.
profiles ·
The cartoonist has created a universe of spidery lines and nervous spaces, turning anxious truth-telling into an authoritative art, Adam Gopnik writes.
life and letters ·
Why do we still search for relics of the Bard?
personal history ·
Two muses, one loaf.
annals of biography ·
Adam Gopnik investigates what President Abraham Lincoln actually said and what was said about him, and explores why different versions of quotations exist.
life and letters ·
Adam Gopnik on why the evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin spent so long preparing to write his masterpiece, “On the Origin of Species.”
postscript ·
“To know Dick Avedon was to know the sun.” Adam Gopnik remembers The New Yorker’s staff photographer.
comment ·
Signed comment about the evolving Canadian national character and the unusual outcome of the recent Winter Olympics judging scandal... The Canadian pairs …
new york journal ·
Adam Gopnik on the Austin H. MacCormick Island Academy, a school for teen-agers who are incarcerated on Rikers Island.
comment ·
Signed comment about celebrity and memory... As with sex before its revolution, celebrity has many to exploit it but few to defend it. Tells about the …
comment ·
Adam Gopnik on critiques about the portrayal of violence in American popular culture, in the wake of the Columbine massacre.
annals of gastronomy ·
Adam Gopnik on the Berkeley ideals that the American chef brings to Paris: the belief that it’s possible—even imperative—to do good by eating well.
a critic at large ·
Adam Gopnik on the literary structure of Kenneth Starr’s report on President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
annals of psychoanalysis ·
Adam Gopnik recalls his years in Freudian psychoanalysis.
comment ·
Signed comment about summer. The American ideal of summer is unreal. The truth is that summer is a muggy climate and an overworked population. And, …
a critic at large ·
Adam Gopnik writes about Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who helped to create the design for New York City‘s Central Park.
books ·
Adam Gopnik reviews Joyce Milton’s “Tramp,” a biography of Charlie Chaplin, and reflects on the comedian’s grounding in British music-hall tradition, his leftist politics, and the childlike purity of his art.
a critic at large ·
Adam Gopnik on the controversial author of “Alice in Wonderland.”
comment ·
Comment about the bombing in Oklahoma City and about depictions of violence in the media. "Terror Strikes the Heartland," read one headline, echoing a note…
comment ·
Adam Gopnik on how the search for what it all means became the search for what the coverage of it all means.
a reporter at large ·
Adam Gopnik on Pierre Chareau’s modernist Glass House, in nineteen-thirties Paris—and the dreams that still haunt it.
profiles ·
Adam Gopnik’s 1993 Profile of Steve Martin at work on his first play, “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”—the story of an imaginary encounter between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein.
a critic at large ·
A reëvaluation of Allen’s comic opus as a writer, filmmaker, and monologuist shows that a clash between the humorist and his culture was an artistic inevitability, Adam Gopnik writes.
letter from beverly hills ·
Nearly every day for decades, Irving V. Link tanned by the luxury pool, Adam Gopnik writes. Then his idyllic life style came under threat from the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei.
profiles ·
PROFILE of American photographer Paul Strand. Strand, now well into his eighties lives with his third wife, the former Hazel Kingsbury, in Orgeval, France,…
profiles ·
PROFILE about the current state of this Long Island community, in Suffolk County. Interviews with its residents--black & white, and tells about its …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Jonas Mekas, champion of the underground cinema, filmmaker, & writer. A Lithuanian of 50, he is also noted for his "Film Culture" journal, his …
profiles ·
PROFILE of the Martin family, pieds noirs, or French Algerians, who fled Algeria in 1962, when that country gained independence, & now live in a village in…
profiles ·
PROFILE of Henry Geldzahler, curator of the Metropolitan Museum's Dept. of 20th Century Art. Tells about his 1969 show for the Met's centennial …
profiles ·
PROFILE of a group of young women active in the cause of the human female. Only their first names are given. Two were well known in the city's new …
a reporter at large ·
REPORTER AT LARGE about the marriage of a thirteen year old Moroccan girl. She had been abducted by a man named Mohammed ben Mohammed ben Mohammed. She was…
a reporter at large ·
REPORTER AT LARGE about the abduction of 13-year-old Khadija, a Moroccan, daughter of Omar ben Allel. Her family & others continue to search for her. Story…
a reporter at large ·
REPORTER AT LARGE about a Moroccan, Omar ben Allel, whose 13-year-old daughter, Khadija, was lost during a pilgrimage. One way to make money in Morocco was…
fiction ·
The chaotic events during a spring day at the Acme Art Museum (presumably the Metropolitan Museum) & a look at its director, Jarvis Cope (presumably Thomas…
fiction ·
"Now that the automobile has been disproved, it is no longer chic to boast of one's ignorance in equine matters. Horses are distinctly "in" these …
profiles ·
PROFILE of poet Allen Ginsberg. Describes Ginsberg's trials and tribulations at Columbia College and a scandal in his senior year involving Herbert …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Samuel B. Gould, the chancellor of the State University of N.Y., tells about the development of public education in N.Y. State. The regents …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Joseph E. Levine, film distributor & producer, head of Embassy Pictures Corp., 1301 6th Ave. Highlights of his activities in 1966 described by …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Robert Cooper Scull, taxicab-fleet-owner and Pop Art collector. In '61, at the gala opening of a junk-sculpture show, Scull met a young man …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Marcel Duchamp, the artist. Toward the end of 1911, he started work on a picture that proved to be too revolutionary even for his fellow-Cubist.…
profiles ·
PROFILE of John Cage, avant-garde American composer, now 52. He is proposing the complete overthrow of the most basic assumptions of Western art since the …
profiles ·
PROFILE of artist Robert Rauschenberg, 38. Together with Jasper Johns, who is 5 years younger, he has often been referred to as the co-founder of the …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Dr. John R. Pierce, Exec. Dir. of Communications Research, of Bell Laboratories, and history of Project Echo of which he was the guiding …
a reporter at large ·
REPORTER AT LARGE about reading, language and speech problems in children (dyslexia), and about Dr. William S. Langford's theory that flexibility is …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Richard Lippold, sculptor. Lately architects have been trying to involve artists and sculptors in their new buildings. Richard Lippold is the …
profiles ·
PROFILE of Jean Tinguely, the Swiss motion sculptor & invenor of the "meta-matic" machines. The new movement called "nouveaux realistes" includes Yves …
profiles ·
Profile of Howe & Hummel, criminal lawyers. The above named book was written by the two shyster lawyers.