The vices of my region are spreading. Its virtues aren’t — Each time I vote in Alabama, I see two kinds of tables I never saw at polling places in my native New Jersey. At the first, someone checks my required photo ID. At the second, volunteers hand out free bottled water and snacks, such as Nutri-Grain bars, bags of Fritos…

‘Dominick the Donkey’ has set toes tapping for 82 years — Brace yourselves, Adele fans. You, too, lovers of Nirvana. A song about a lovable donkey who helps Santa deliver gifts out-charted both of them in Britain after BBC Radio 1 gave it heavy air time during the holiday season a decade ago. The Italian-American singer Lou Monte recorded “Dominick the…

The device works brilliantly when it succeeds. But it can bring a book down when it doesn’t — Unreliable narration — the use of a storyteller we can’t fully trust — helps to explain the appeal of books as different as Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. But why do fiction writers use the device…

A Dutch-born banker in Manhattan becomes unmoored in a post-9/11 ghost story with neo-Gothic undertones — This story first appeared on a blog soon after the publication of Netherland, the finest novel I’d read about the aftermath of 9/11. …

An all-black marching band has been making spirits bright — whether or not it’s Christmas — since 1883 — Need a reason to believe Uncle Sam is spending your tax dollars well? Here’s one: In June, the U.S. government honored the Mobile, Alabama–based Excelsior brass marching band — perhaps the best such band east of Preservation Hall — with a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for its…

Rachel Maddow struck gold with ‘Ultra’ — but she’s the exception — Rachel Maddow launched her podcast Ultra on Oct. 10, and it topped the Apple charts by Dec. 1. A sign of the health of the form? Not necessarily. Media critics were complaining that podcasts were a creatively exhausted form long before the MSNBC host entered the field with her first…

If you think you know Shirley Jackson’s tale, can you explain why the victim is a woman? — “The Lottery” is a story a lot of people think they know: a grim tale of a small town that annually stones to death a resident chosen in a random drawing. Some critics say it’s about Americans’ reluctance to give up harmful rituals or beliefs. That’s a plausible argument, but…

Strippers, Star Trek, and a great-grandmother’s rap video help to define the new messaging — Something funny has happened to political campaigns. Candidates have figured out that you don’t have to let the attack dogs loose with every ad. You can make people laugh and still get elected, or use humor in a way that helps voters remember you next time. Witty and entertaining ads…