Tag: Cults

Marriage and Other Shams

In the early 1980s, an Indian guru homesteaded a tract of ranchland in rural Oregon, building a utopia equipped to withstand both HIV and American hypocrisy. Armed with free love and even freer ...

A Ouija for the Apocalypse

It is no easy feat to establish a cult and herald the apocalypse. I learned this firsthand while playing the card-based videogame Cultist Simulator, set in ...

The Cult of Girlhood

Is girlhood a cult? Emma Cline’s new novel draws on the history of the Manson Family to explore how girlhood and cults both depend on rituals and intimacies. The Girls seems to tell the story of how ...

Trouble in Lovecraft Country

Matt Ruff’s novel Lovecraft Country drops into the world of science-fiction and horror publishing at an interesting time. The fandom around this culture is arcane and probably irremediably nerdy to ...

Perestroika Blues

Now nearing the end of its fourth season, The Americans is a confounding success. It’s hard to figure out which of its triumphs is the most unlikely: that it has millions of Americans rooting for KGB ...

Translating The Magic Flute

When I got a call last year about translating a new Magic Flute libretto for an English-language production at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. The Magic Flute had ...

Cult Fiction

In the alternate, very recent past of Fiona Maazel’s second novel, Woke Up Lonely, Esme Haas, mistress of disguise and secret agent for the secretive “Department of the Interior,” is tasked with ...