Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism, including Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer? and The People and the Books: Eighteen Classics of Jewish Literature. His most recent volume is The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review section and has written for publications including The New Yorker and Tablet. He lives in New York. (Photograph by Miranda Sita.)

Adam Kirsch

Truths Too Terrible: On Arthur Schnitzler and Franz Kafka

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Around the World

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

"Writing only leads to more writing." — Colette

Literary Criticism

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." — George Bernard Shaw

History

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil

Cultural Studies

Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism, including Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer? and The People and the Books: Eighteen Classics of Jewish Literature. His most recent volume is The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review section and has written for publications including The New Yorker and Tablet. He lives in New York. (Photograph by Miranda Sita.)