Theodore Dreiser, “A Traveler at Forty: Paris!”

Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints sing again in new recording

Tim Page: The blunt, bracing, witty, still-relevant “bomb thrower” Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson, the music critic who “managed to demystify an art that was often regarded as otherworldly”

Theodore Dreiser, “The Village Feudists”

Ishmael in Warsaw: Daniel Aaron’s Polish Journal

Thomas Mallon on Booth Tarkington: “he sees things through to their bitter, true conclusion”

Kimberly King Parsons salutes Eileen Myles, Denis Johnson, and other voices she “would follow anywhere”

Photos: Wendell Berry and friends celebrate What I Stand On

Nathaniel Philbrick asks Why Read Moby-Dick? and many rise to the “cunning test”

Stephen Colbert’s two-minute Moby-Dick lesson is a real roller-coaster ride

E. L. Doctorow pays tribute to Herman Melville’s great “kitchen-sink sort of book”

From 2013: A birthday tribute to Toni Morrison

Coming attractions: LOA hits the trail, rounds up four classics in The Western

Wendell Berry, “The Rise”

Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd: Elemental conflict in a vivid tapestry of life at sea