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From the archives

Between Words

Anne Carson’s new book-without-a-spine, and the spiritual experience of centrelessness

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

A postmodern elegy from our most original writer

Boredom as a Political Weapon

Saul Bellow fought banality—and taught us to look hard at the world

Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson is the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better (Penguin, 2013) and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and Wired.

Articles by
Clive Thompson

Use Your Head

Neuroscientific lessons for navigating a world of distractions November 2014
Joni Mitchell is a famously creative person. But she is also meticulously organized: her house is filled with “custom-designed, special-purpose drawers,” each of which is devoted to a particular type of object—one for Scotch tape, a different one for masking tape, one for string, another for light bulbs. “I don’t want to waste energy looking for things,” she…