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Extinction is the fate of ideas that fail to evolve. Marxism, which crept out of the polluted swamp of the Industrial Revolution, now lies gasping... more»
Dear Mad magazine: “What you publish is cheap, miserable trash! Fortunately, I also am cheap, miserable trash!” So many years, so much mail... more»
What is jihad? Self-purification? An inner moral struggle? An attempt to be true to the will of God? Apparently it means anything but a holy war... more»
Copyright is no doubt crucial to innovation and growth, but it’s a protection that can be taken too far. Let’s end the copyright race, says Lawrence Lessig... more»
France: so sophisticated, chic, such superb food. And the intellectual tradition! So Victoria Kaulback decided to cross the Channel and live in Paris. Bad mistake... more»
John Gray’s bitter cynicism about the Thatcher years makes his new book attractive to many, says Kenan Malik. In some ways he even makes an odd bedfellow of Steven Pinker... more»
What the Middle East needs is peace, not shouted historical judgments, says Amitai Etzioni. Sorting out who’s most abusive or most abused only extends the bloodshed... more»
Is Britain a repository for history, learning, and sophistication? No, for U.S. pop culture it’s people with awful chest hair, bad teeth, and inscrutable slang. Gotta love it... more»
Curmudgeons unite! Cheerful cancer sufferers survive no longer than cranky ones. Snipers, terrorists, bleeding markets: it’s time for the power of negative thinking... more»
If politics were food, Japan’s would be far left cuisine: Bauhaus simplicity in Soviet portions. Right-wing food? The rich, aristocratic menu of France, bouillabaisse at $23 a bowl... more»
No musical performance ever swept away cobwebs
like Glenn Gould’s 1955 Goldbergs. The great pianist would have
turned 70... more»
... more» ... more» ... more»
... more».
The CBC celebrates Gould. National
Library of Canada archive. Robert
Fulford’s regrets,
Edward Rothstein’s awe. The F minor
email list. One man’s Gould memorial.
Puritans weren’t puritanical. Sex was godly, in its proper place, and a sin such as sodomy might tempt anyone... more»
He embalmed classical music. Or he mass-marketed it. Or he was too mechanical. Like Picasso, Arturo Toscanini was symbol and root of all evil... more»
Saddam Hussein’s life is a story of violent murder on a mass and a minute scale, of paranoia, rage, self-delusion, but above all of survival ... more» ... more»
Daniel Ellsberg has a way of popping up at key moments in history, like Forrest Gump. He’s obsessed not with politics, but with bad political decisions... more» ... more»
Philosophy professors, or so at least Bernard Williams seems to think, have techniques to stand outside history and judge truth. Richard Rorty has his doubts... more»
There is an echo of our dark, primeval past in Halloween. Indeed, it’s an ancient holiday, going back all the way to the macabre mists of 1929... more»
No critic is easier to ridicule than Harold Bloom, his books now more branding than scholarship, more K-Mart than Yale. And yet, says Judith Shulevitz... more» ... more»
Ladies: life as an artist’s muse is risky. It lasts about as long as the career of your average NFL lineman. Worse, it may tempt you to write or paint... more»
Daniel Goldhagen’s attack on Pius XII will see him thrashed from all sides, pro and anti-Pius. Not that his error-riddled book doesn’t deserve it... more» ... more»
One critic has called Oriana Fallaci’s newest “a regressive book, which will be read by people with reptilian brains.” Sure. People like, uh, Americans... more»
Reverse Sokal hoax? French TV personalities publish papers in theoretical physics that nobody understands... more» ... more» ... more»
Dowdy, low-rent countries are liked by some laid-back Britons. They can teach English and live in modest comfort. Strike Italy off their list... more»
The Islamic world has long been a land of one religion and few states, while the West was composed of many states and more religions... more
Could an intuitive mind come upon scientific truth long before any evidence? Sure. But if the mind is an artist’s, is it a real discovery?... more»
Elie Wiesel speaks for Russian Jews, Tibetans, boat people, but above all, victims of the Holocaust. And Palestinians?... more»
Sidney Hook’s whole life was sustained by a philosophical ostinato: to oppose every shade of totalitarianism... more» ... more»
Oliver James says the only way to survive family life is with therapy. Our parents poison our lives, as we poison the lives of our children... more» ... more»
Poets stay out of trouble, said Langston Hughes, by writing “mostly about love, roses and moonlight, sunsets and snow.” (He was speaking to Joe McCarthy)... more»
Like New Guineans obsessed by cargo cults, education theorists are in thrall to bad ideas. They need better science, says E.D. Hirsch... more»
James Bond: sadistic, sexist, snobbish, totally heartless... more» ... more». Ian Fleming: chain smoking, hard drinking, desperately, cripplingly bored... more»
Some black neighborhoods in Indianapolis have been turned into war zones. How to explain it? Racism? Failed industry? Bad bus service? John McWhorter wonders... more»
David Lodge has a wonderful sense of the queasiness people feel to watch science march into the mind, the fear we’ll all be robots in the end... more»
John Nash received a Nobel Prize, but not for math. So was it a Nobel Prize in Economics? Surprise: not even exactly that, Yves Gingras explains... more»
It’s October, and spring’s class of high-school grads has started college . But not all of them. Ben, age 19, has his girl, a car, and a decent job. It’s enough for him... more»
Here’s an apologist for sin who is merely pathetic as a sinner: his idea of being really bad is eating lots of chocolate cake... more»
In Milan Kundera’s clumsy new novella, a portenteous, worn-out philosophy that borders on the absurd stands in for real thinking... more»
Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray photo 51 was the key to the puzzle of DNA. Does that make her a co-discoverer of the double helix with Watson and Crick?... more»
The artistic yearnings of Nazi poets and painters casts a bleak light on the redemptive power of art, the idea that beauty will make us better people... more»
The leadership of the current antiwar movement is building a firebreak around itself, says Todd Gitlin, preferring the bitter-end orthodoxy of the Old Left to success... more»
They said it of Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor. Now Gore Vidal says it of the “Bush junta” and 9/11: the President knew it was coming but may have deliberately let it happen... more»
Cursing jingoism is an honorable tradition of the American Left. But the Left cannot afford to reject patriotism on principle, says Michael Kazin... more»
Mr Hussein, By your Distempers and want of Decent Principles, by your Vile Threats and notorious Felonies, I request a Gentleman’s Satisfaction. — George W. Bush... more»
Politics and culture are not enemies, says Imre Kertész, and their divorce creates a place for boundless despotism. It may not destroy lives and property, but always corrupts the human soul... more»
“Know thyself,” the Greek sage advised, but it’s nonsense, says David Brooks. “Overrate thyself” would be more like today’s motto: live in the warm glow of self-esteem... more»
Having marched or spoken out over Vietnam, Chile, South Africa, and Palestine, Christopher Hitchens despises “a Left that thinks Osama bin Laden is a misguided anti-imperialist”... more»
If Islamofascists gain control of Indonesia, the country won’t be a local dictatorship like Suharto’s, but a launch-pad for an Islamic superstate in the region. Australia: be warned... more»
George W. Bush is no Hamlet. Think instead of Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt in 1415 has its echo in the West’s victory over the Taliban in 2001. John Lewis Gaddis explains... more»
Not just schoolteachers and intellectuals, says Clive James, but most pundits and journalists in Australia have blamed terrorism on the vices of liberal democracies. That was until Bali... more»
We value truth, but lie we must, says Bernard Williams: personal relations would be impossible if everyone told the truth about everything all the time... more» ... more»
Were Bill Clinton’s White House years a string of cynical ad hoc policies designed for the polls or was he victim of a right-wing lynch mob?... more»
All known societies have religion, which we tend to connect with humanity’s noble, not its evil side. But religion can preach murder and suicide... more»
Millions of animals, either semi-wild or domestic, would never have been born if not for human design. So does man have dominion over animals?... more»
À La Recherche du Temps Perdu is a gigantic work with a simple story: the hero travels the world in search of wisdom... more» ... more»
For Jesse James, who imbibed violence with his mother’s milk, life was a string of skirmishes. He was not a Robin Hood; he was not even nice... more»
Hey, Waitress! Yul Brynner was sweet, Jesse Jacksonrude. Liza Minelli stiffed a waitress, Arthur Miller left a quarter, and Jimmy Carter asked for a doggy bag... more»
In Adolph Menzel’s great 1875 painting, Iron Rolling Mill, workers forces a blurred white-hot rod into the maw of a laminating cylinder... more»
“Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though apt to fill a man with self-righteousness.” Adam and Eve were vegetarians. So was Adolf Hitler... more»
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Almost everything the Washington sniper “experts” and “profilers” told the media over the past three weeks was wrong... more»
Scholars who challenge the NRA should make sure their footnotes are correct before they go to press. Michael Bellesiles knows... more» ... more» ... update»
Historian Michael Bellesiles, author of a controversial book on guns in early America, has resigned from his post at Emory University... more» ... more»
Humanitarianism is fine, says David Rieff, but it has to wise up. Feeding mass murderers since they too get hungry is not smart international aid... more»
So how is Viagra helping in the fight to save the endangered species of the planet? (Hint: they are not giving the pills to the animals)... more»
Oy Vey! Scientists compile a list of the world’s funniest jokes, and not one of them is Jewish. It raises a heartbreaking question: Are Jews still funny?... more»
The choice of poet Dana Gioia to head the NEA is the best arts hire in Washington since Archibald MacLeish was Librarian of Congress... more» ... more»
The British Empire is a black hole in history, the subject of shame, guilt, and post-colonial funk. Now a new museum... more»
After Darwin painters began to see themselves as organisms responding to light. Monet showed shimmering light on the retina... more»
It’s not just ignorant rubes, casinogoers, and NBA players who succumb to the gambler’s fallacy: even high-powered scientists... more»
Political power runs in families: the Kennedys, Bushes père et fils, all those Nehrus. And don’t forget Saddam’s charming boys... more»
Our brains aren’t built to grasp the notion that the world just exists, with no cause: we live in a godless chaos... more»
Æneas had a mission: to establish a glorious new city and, even more important, to initiate a genetic line that would dominate the world. The idea has a distinctly Darwinian ring... more»
Dave Eggers loved R.E.M. Then their audience grew to include “old people and stupid people, and my moron neighbour who had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony R.E.M. lovers dead”... more»
Their new house was in the California wine-country. And among the oaks, a welcoming committee of a doe and a fawn, resplendent in their beautiful spring coats. Then the trouble began... more»
Nature vs. nurture? In truth, it’s always a combination of both that explains the features that make us human. Right? Not so fast, says evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker... more» ... more»
“The people here know and care nothing about Europe,” the Italians told A.S. Byatt. “They hate the people in the next village. Europe is nothing.” So what is European identity?... more»
Movies are more conservative and compromised than they’ve ever been, says Bret Easton Ellis. Most terrible is that people who love movies aren’t making them: lawyers and agents are... more»
Tina Brown is just an extreme version of the rest of us. She has an unquenchable penchant for power, celebrity, and scandal which she presents in that clear, cold, vampish voice that is hers alone... more»
Crunchy conservatives. Imagine a couple who make their own granola and collect their organic carrots from the health-food coop with a National Review tote bag... more» A young fogey responds.
“That which does not exist in the media does not exist in reality” is an idea appealing to both mafia bosses and postmodern professors. September 11th killed it dead... more»
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Christian and ethicist, will not sign a petition against a U.S. attack on Iraq. Can war be justified to halt violence, hatred, and torture? With St. Augustine, she says, “Yes”... more»
Why do we love a good puzzle? What is it about brain-teasers, crosswords, and board games that attracts hordes of ordinary folk?... more»
Harold Bloom’s work is without doubt encyclopedic. He also looks, on the analogy of the stand-up comic, like a stand-up critic... more»
Scientists were as keen to roll religion in the 19th century as the believers were to shoot down science. It was a war... more»
Venice is a universal city, says Jan Morris. It bewitches us with light and shadow, with smells and noises and idioms... more»
Question: What’s a queer in Australia? Answer: It’s a man who prefers women to beer. Are ethnic jokes in essence acts of hate?... more»
The great achievements of Fidel Castro’s revolution are education, health, and sports; it’s failures remain breakfast, lunch, and dinner... more»
The accusation of genocide against Christopher Columbus is not a recent, politically fashionable indictment: it is nearly 500 years old... more»
Orlando Figes’s Natasha’s Dance excels as pastiche. Why cite the source when you can just call him “brilliant”?... more» “Ouch!”
Hitler may have lost the war, but that cute, economical little car he designed captured our hearts as it glided down the freeway (another of the Führer’s inventions)... more»
Pearl Harbor tells a tale familiar to every child: how a great nation was attacked and humbled by the imperious pride of Ben Affleck... more»
A new magazine opposes free trade and globalization to protect workers and laments neocons. The editor? Noam Chomsky? Surprise... more» ... more» ... more»
Admiring scenery is not Paul Theroux’s style: the Chinese view the world as a spittoon, the Japanese are “little bow-legged people who can’t see without glasses”... more»
Rollercoaster fans love the clank of the safety ratchets as they climb the first hill. To Andrew Martin it sounded like the dreaded chains of A Christmas Carol... more»
Hitchens vs. Amis: cocky, pompous, conceited, “with their pub bore’s manner and with their assumption that we are all obsessed with them... more»
The Bali atrocity shows the weakness and rage of Islamic terrorists. They are reduced to assassination and mass murder. The tide is against them... more»
Stephen Ambrose, historian who brought the bloody reality of combat to millions of readers, is dead of lung cancer... more» ... more»
Natural born prisoner. Lord Jeffrey Archer’s prison diaries give us a man who is, ah, a true innocent. Theodore Dalrymple has seen it before... more»
Steven Pinker’s learned, tough, witty new book shows us that an innately flawed but rich human nature is a force for good... more» ... more»
Umberto Eco is regarded by some as a swaggering, self-important man: “he sees the world as a web of signs waiting to be deciphered — by him”... more»
“No entire people has ever burned with love for a woman, no state has set its hope on money or gain; ambition seizes individuals one by one” said Seneca... more»
Marcel Proust gives us “a restless intelligence peering into every corner of the life of the mind; the gift for comic mimicry rivalled perhaps only by Dickens; above all, the experience of the novel as a journey”... more»
In the 1940s, book reviews were more honest than now, B.R. Myers opines. Today’s verbal pyrotechnics are empty bangs and flashes for people too dull to appreciate natural language... more»
Robert Solow is still skeptical about computing and productivity: “Comparing the computer with electricity or the internal combustion engine just doesn’t seem to me to be justified yet”... more»
Justice was George Orwell’s passion: “I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed, to be one of them and on their side against their tyrants”... more»
The story of love today is about me: finding my own true self, my autonomy and personal growth, says Frank Furedi. No wonder stats show more people are living alone than ever before... more»
When astronomers talk stellar evolution, said Stephen Jay Gould, it’s not Darwin: “Stars do not change through time because mama and papa stars generate broods of varying daughter stars”... more»
For the ancient philosophers, love of the good was coeval with the human condition. Friedrich Nietzsche had nothing but contempt for the idea. This leaves us, says Damon Linker, with a choice... more»
“When I was younger I wanted to go to bed with other people,” Kate Reddy confides. “Now that I have two children, my fiercest desire is to go to bed with myself for a whole twelve hours”... more»
Being abused bodily by a priest is deplorable and disgusting. Much worse, says Richard Dawkins, is the spiritual harm caused by Catholic doctrine... more»
September 11th presented the American left with an awful quandary, says Andrew Sullivan. Its intellectual and literary leadership was unprepared for the stark moral choice before it... more»
Third-world sufferers from genocide, AIDS, and famine wish out loud for Al Qaeda in their neighborhoods. Someone might start to pay attention... more»
Late Beethoven “fragmentary”? The claim by Theodor Adorno is just a grandiose way of saying Beethoven is abrupt and disconcerting... more»
The ethnocentrism of Clifford Geertz. The project began as a way to respect indigenous values and combat racism. It has become an intellectual and moral nightmare... more»
Is the universe a computer? Stephen Wolfram’s conjecture is not just unproved: it has not even been stated in a way that could be proved, says Steven Weinberg... more»
Martin Cruz Smith’s new novel is set in Tokyo on the eve Pearl Harbor. It is passionate yet ironic, both “samurai drama” and cool Bogie movie... more»
We are hardwired to get fat. Put us within arm’s reach of junk food, free us from manual labor, and few will stay trim. It’s the triumph of instinct over reason... more»
Stalin terrorized people, but Hitler seduced them, with ancient myth, symbols, rituals, spectacle, images, and the inspiring traditions of Western high art... more»
The real job of a New York Mayor — bringing a huge bureaucracy to heel — is not the same as facing down terrorist threats and staving off mass hysteria... more»
Phyllis Chesler has often been a victim of female treachery: ungrateful students, feminist compatriots who’ve stolen her ideas, and most of all her mother. Are women so awful?... more»
Georges Bataille likened Auschwitz to the Pyramids or the Acropolis: it was a talisman of civilization. He was just as elated by the bombing of Hiroshima... more»
In 1857 a group of 120 pioneers were clubbed, stabbed, and shot. Did Brigham Young organize the Massacre at Mountain Meadows?... more»
America’s well-meaning desire for diversity entails a culture without high art: equal opportunity for everything, except excellence... more»
Henrietta Lacks died in 1951. Since then, her cellular descendents have gone over the world: odd immortality ... more» ... more» ... more»
Okay, so he’s a slow learner. But Ron Rosenbaum grew up reading The Nation and believing Soviet evil was in J. Edgar Hoover’s head. Now it’ Goodbye to all that... more»
Don’t believe that spam about increasing your breast size, ladies. We offer real news: the bra that sucks... more» (A reader advises also to look here.)
Politicians won’t admit it: military prowess cannot prevent unpredictable attacks on U.S. cities. Richard Rorty explains... more»
Believers liked dark, dramatic séances: rapping tables, floating trumpets for spirit voices, and gooey, smelly ectoplasm... more»
The fear on the left is that if there is a human nature, we won’t be free to design a better future. The fear is groundless, says Steven Pinker... more»
At seventy-seven, Oscar Peterson is an ambiguous figure, admired by audiences and musicians, held in contempt by many critics... more»
It’s not many who’ve known Ernest Hemingway, done voices for The Simpsons, and sparred with Muhammad Ali. But George Plimpton... more»
Don’t compare Iraq with Syria, Jordan, or Egypt, says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken. In Iraq people are buried alive under asphalt. This country is hell... more»
Evil: the word may suggest to us the Holocaust or Killing Fields. But modern agony over evil dates an earlier cataclysm: the Lisbon earthquake... more»
The tools, blankets, quilts, jugs, toys, and time killers that now fill museums — folk art — weren’t meant as masterpieces. These days, they can cost near as much... more»
Travesties was long a favorite with highbrows struck by the notion of a meeting of James Joyce, Lenin, and Tristan Tzara in Zurich. Not Tom Stoppard’s best play... more»
Asked if he thought bringing about a communist utopia was worth any
sacrifice, even the sacrifice of millions of lives, Eric Hobsbawm
answered in the affirmative... more»
“There’s but one imperialism, and if it isn’t American it’s not
imperialism.” The Left has evolved a surprising range of views in
the aftermath of September 11th... more»
Physics increasingly looks like the sick man of science. As divided
as a shattered nucleus, it watches biology and computer science attract
the best students... more»
It is time... to, uh, stand up for truth. Or mend fences. Or face
facts. Or maybe it’s time to give up the “time for” rhetorical conceit,
writes Michael Kinsley... more»
In friendship, good taste would be tact, generosity, and kindness;
in possessions, comfort, elegance, and utility; in art, beauty and
originality; in culture, tolerance... more»
Fin-de-siècle Vienna offered the most charming distractions:
betting on horses, billiards in cafés, nights at the theatre or in the
arms of girls like Jeanette... more»
When Russia, China, and India have had enough of Al Qaida and its allies,
it won’t be a sight for the squeamish, writes Bernard Lewis... more».
Only a phantom war needs an anniversary, says Susan
Sontag.
The age of the pianistic “lion,” of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, is dead. It
died with Vladimir Horowitz in the same month that the Berlin Wall
fell... more»
“Americans have not yet learned the tragic lesson that the most
powerful cannot be loved - hated, envied, feared, obeyed, respected,
even honored perhaps, but not loved”... more»
Ian Jack, not a Marxist himself, has a bit of Soviet kitsch on the mantle:
a fake bronze bust of the heroic Lenin. Should he have it there? Is
this like having a bust of Hitler?... more»
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Locke and Descartes: their wanderings, wars,
and struggles make Kant’s look like nothing. Yet his story is every bit
as gripping as theirs... more»
Why do so-called enlightened states, the U.S. and its clients, single out
the crimes of others but never respond to their own crimes? Noam
Chomsky wants to know... more»
The lovely, decayed city of Havana stands as a dreadful warning
against monomaniacs certain of a theory that explains everything,
including the future of humanity... more»
Applause: polite or rowdy, warm or cool, this bond between audience
and performer is losing its meaning. These days “they’d give a standing
ovation to a train wreck”... more»
Oh, those smart, sexy, romantic men of Britain. You’re hoping for a
date with the dashing Mr. Darcy. What you get is Austin Powers... more»
... earlier].
American women? It’s just yack, yack, yack.
Turn down that orchestra! They are getting louder and louder. If
you play oboe in a big symphonic emsemble, your ears are in danger. As for
subtle tone color, forget it... more»
Was America’s Afghanistan action justified? Could such an
attack, evil in itself, ever be justified by a further end? Three
theorists put their views: Darrel
Moellendorf, Chris
Bertram, and Saladin
Meckled-Garcia.
Creativity. Beethoven was a very, very creative person. And so is
Elton John. And so are you. Best of all, in Britain art is helping to
build a better society... more».
Not, says that boring old fart, Simon
Rattle.
The “Let’s roll” line on Iraq now being promoted in Washington might give
us what we want least: an unstable jihadist Arab world, argues Salman
Rushdie... more»
The Germans call me a German, said Albert Einstein, and the English
call me a Jew. If my theories turn out to be wrong, the English will call
me a German, and the Germans... more»
Arab armies lose wars. The best officers are denied independence,
decisions are all top to bottom, enlisted men are treated like animals.
And that’s just for starters... more»
Starting a novel is a lot like starting a marriage, says Ann
Patchett. You dive into the lives of your characters, falling in love
with them, pinning your dreams on them... more»
Biography loves Sylvia Plath. She was married to Ted Hughes. She
killed herself. Death and marriage fed and fueled her writing, but now
they cramp her style... more»
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation has inspired generations of sci-fi
fans. Might it also have inspired Osama Bin Laden to attack the evil
empire of New York?... more»
In the 1980s Martin Amis began to fret about seriousness the way Diana
worried about her hair. Thus started a slide toward becoming a
ludicrous moral poseur... more»
... more»
Forget globalization. Drop the idea that the West is devoted to democracy
and peace. Peter Gowan on the insights and omissions of offensive
realism... more»
John Wheeler notes that Darwin gave a clear explanation for the
origin and diversity of life on Earth. Could physicists ever do that for
origin of the universe? “Absolutely,” he says... more»
“The exercise of permanent rule over a foreign nation can only be defended
by an ideology of self-worship,” said Abba Eban. Now consider the
Six-Day War... more»
... NPR]
What happened to the U.S. on 9/11 is an enigma as baffling as Cortés’s
appearance must have been to the Aztecs. Call it tragedy? Crime? Act of
war? Try fantasy ideology... more»
Its periodicals are run by callow cliques of pseudo-populist snobs. It
understands neither workers nor bosses. The Left is in deep trouble, says
Camille Paglia... more»
Real education will make students so keen on chemistry that the school’s
chemicals have to be locked up. The kids then secretly study lock design,
says Richard Dawkins... more»
Is it embarrassment, or guilt over the very fact of being English? Or is
it just absent-mindedness? Anthony Browne risks charges of racism to say:
Britain is losing Britain... more»
International Jewry, out to pervert all the values of civilisation, needed
a secret guide. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was perfect to
the job. Umberto Eco explains... more»
The President’s bioethics council knows cloning can cure disease, but
prohibits it because a zygote is nascent human being, in essence a
child... more»
Failed artist? Hardly. In fact, once he found his métier, Adolf
Hitler was masterly, first as a dramatic orator and then as an
impresario of political theatre... more»
... more»
The child who dwells inside us trusts that somewhere are wise men who know
truth, says Czeslaw Milosz. This idea gives beauty and passion to
intellectual life... more»
Virgina Woolf’s cast of mind - shallow, dishonest, resentful,
envious, snobbish, philistine, trivial - has at last triumphed among the
elites of the West... more»
There’s plenty of merit in restating Stalin’s exorbitant, lustful,
paranoid, bloodthirsty criminality. But Martin Amis tries just a
little too hard to make his case... more»
Is history at an end? It looks that way to Europeans, and they may be
right about Europe. But for the rest of the world? Francis Fukuyama
rethinks the question... more»
Stability: that’s what we all long for in the Middle East. But why? Maybe
the best thing for the region would be a heavy dose of real
chaos... more».
Bishops
for Saddam.
Nearly a dozen men, experts all in germ warfare and bioterrorism, murdered
over the world within months of each other. Coincidence? Well, yes,
it just might be... more»
John Rawls’s liberalism stands on faith in the idea that all people
are by nature free and equal. It’s not far from religion, says Peter
Berkowitz... more»
Patio Man: on the verge of buying a fine new barbecue grill, his
eyes glisten with a faraway visionary zeal, like an old prophet gazing
into the promised land... more»
Madame Bovary opened a vision of emptiness for A.S. Byatt,
one made all the more appalling because it was so full of clothes and
furniture, rooms, books, and gardens... more»
For mathematicians, their subject is a science. For scientists it
is but a tool, like a scalpel or a condensor: the talent of the user is
what really makes the difference... more»
Harold Bloom has declared that he never revises his prose. Indeed,
there is nothing in his work that refutes this impressive claim, says
Joseph Epstein... more»
Female suicide bombers are idealists, says Andrea Dworkin. They are
young women who crave a pure act that will “wipe away the stigma of being
female”... more»
Much of what passes for art today is merely showmanship, or hype, or
fashion. Art makers and art fakers have always lived side by side, says
Jeanette Winterson... more»
Daniel Goldhagen’s newest attack on Pope Pius XII, with its “doctored
quotations, sloppy inaccuracies, half-truths, and falsehoods,” is a
literary hate crime... more»
Sanctimoniousness and a kind of self-aggrandizing homespun clouds
virtually all the work of Maya Angelou, despite its readability ...
more»
A poem can be hard. Or it can be like walking into a Denny’s restaurant:
familiar, comfy, mediocre - the same ol’ stuff on the
same ol’ menu... more»
The experience of silence is a rare event in our noise-polluted
earth. Yet meaning in music, even the meaning of death and life itself,
depend on it... more»
Clockwork mechanism: was it invented in the Renaissance? No: those
amazing Greeks show again not only that they had a word for it, they had
it... more»
William Phillips, founder and editor of Partisan Review, a
man who refused “to lick Stalin’s boots,” is dead at 94. Obits: Guardian
... Telegraph
... Boston
Globe ... NY
Times
“It’s my favorite comic strip,” a teenage boy once wrote to the creator of
Little Orphan Annie. John Updike knew a great cartoon when
he saw it... more»
Pity the poor book reviewer, her desk piled high with vanity press
or self-published dross. The phone rings, and it’s yet another pestering
author... more»
A home smells of cooking. If we want respect and love, we must eat
together. We can conquer obesity, too: stop grazing, stop gorging... more»
Having spent years trying to grasp the pull of luxury, James
Twitchell has come more to sympathize with its virtues and forgive its
excesses... more»
For Theodor Adorno, music must be politically progressive, speak
without sentimentality about suffering and its social origins. A big
task... more»
Rolling back radical Islam: from Detroit to Jakarta, a vivid
religion flourishes, one which presents a gorgeous potential. Let’s
consider its better face... more»
Pauline, as everyone called her, Women’s Affairs Minister in Rwanda, was a
genocidal monster who turned her son into a murdering rapist... more»
If the Kurds play their cards with skill, they may come out well after a
US-led offensive against Baghdad. But they want more than just a voice
in Iraq... more»
Art conservation is a primary job for any curator. But what if an
artist creates a work that is intended to putrefy? What is the curator to
conserve?... more»
Give Moonlight a chance. On an aged Steinway in Ramallah,
Daniel Barenboim plays and teaches to the delight of Palestinian
students... more»
Proust says that in fashion and art we need new names. We’ve had Harold
Bloom’s before us for a long time. He presents a bloat worth
puncturing... more»
The fall: he does not look down. He looks straight ahead to his doom.
There is a terrifying dignity about that image, writes Leon
Wieseltier... more»
Dissident Muslim scholars, the Young Turks of Islamic studies,
reject the idea that ills of the Arab world can all be blamed on Great
Satan America... more»
“Man will become better when you show him what he is like,” Chekhov wrote.
Showing us what we’re like is Steven Pinker’s life project... more»
... more»
The Americans are ill suited to being a superpower, argued Reinhold
Niebuhr. They are either embarrassed by power or disguise it as
virtue... more»
75% of Iranians are under age 25. They despise the “public morality
police.” Friday prayers attract barely 1% of them. The mullahs are
nervous... more»
... more»
“Hyperselectionist” was the term Stephen Jay Gould used to abuse
Pinker, Dennett, and Dawkins. He was a fox, they were the hedgehogs... more»
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s flair for motion, his insistent, sexual
line, shows in works done from Paris brothels in the 1890s, for instance,
The Sofa... more»
... image]
The Dogon know what seems to be advanced astronomy. Were they
taught it by beings who came from Sirius 5000 years ago? Great story,
but... more»
If gneiss, Clepsydra, Gaullist, ducal,
oxylophyte, or bidet leave you scratching your head, you’re
not ready for the National Spelling Bee... more»
Saudi princes have grafted a high-tech cultivar onto medieval roots
by buying off clerics, Americans, terrorists, and their own benighted
people... more»
With unbowed independence of mind, V.S. Naipaul
remains, in his gloomy way, a thorn in the side bien-pensant types of
every political stripe... more».
His Nobel
lecture (Real Audio).
The Nation: earnest, dreary, as appetizing as homework. The
Weekly Standard: “Hey, we’re having fun over here on the Right!”
The Left is so dull and puritanical... more» ... more»
The new SAT is not a retreat from standards: it’s better than the old
version. Writing ability is at last being tested... more».
The real losers with the new SAT, says Stanley Kurtz, are “diamonds in the
rough.”
Wright brothers? No, no. It was a shy New Zealand cellist and
farmer who first took off in a flying machine. Too bad about the
landing... more»
Julia Child, with her hooting voice, her naughty humor, happily
slopping about the kitchen. Who’d ever accuse her of insider trading?...
more»
Americans have always recoiled at the idea of a secret police. Yet they
have come near to having one with their most dangerous institution,
the FBI... more»
The demographics are clear, and the message familiar: young,
exuberant, multi-colored America vs. ageing, decrepit, inward-looking
Europe... more»
Schadenfreude. Why feel guilty pleasure in others’ woes? And why
the glee over the troubles of Martha Stewart?... more».
Maybe we should instead more admire
her.
As Ralph Ellison knew from Handel, “Music will not only calm, it
will ennoble thee.” For him, the most ennobling music was jazz... more»
Tunnel of Love. What if the first car of every NYC subway train
were to be designated as the place to meet the commuter of your dreams?...
more»
The 100 greatest Britons of all time? Boy George, Diana, Bono,
Cliff Richard, and David Bowie, to be sure. Besides, whoever heard of
Wordsworth, Byron, Constable, or Keats?... more»
... more»
... more»
... more»
It was when the checkout clerk at Nature’s Foods asked her for a senior
card. That did it. The aging hippie vowed to find herself a plastic
surgeon... more»
Joyce Carol Oates veers from Swift’s dark, embittered vision to the
thrill that there really are enough wonderful people in the world... more»
Immortality. As Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve it
through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.” The search
continues... more»
“My chest tightens and I feel an unpleasant prickling on my brow,” reports
a chess player facing Alexandra Kosteniuk. Just fear of losing?...
more»
“Approximately 100% of crop circles are man-made,” says Joe
Nickell. “Approximately” to allow, he explains, for dogs chasing their
tails... more»
A designer virus that killed rats and only rats would be a boon for
mankind. But what if such a useful, potent technology were hijacked by
terrorists?... more»
Globalization can lift the poor out of misery. But after we’ve heard all
the success stories, let’s admit as well that not everyone is a
winner... more»
Chesley Bonestell, the artist who launched a thousand spaceships,
imagined planetary scenes that astonish us today in their prescience...
more»
It had Jim Crow till the 1960s, and was last to ban flogging.
Delaware: rapacious parasite state with a history of avarice and
disloyalty... more».
The state defended... scroll down]
8:15 A.M., 3,623 other planes in the sky, and captain read the oddest
message: “There has been a terrorist attack. Shut down all access to
the flight deck”... Part
I] ... Part
II]
There is obvious pleasure in exposing wine snobs, even more than
art snobs. So can world experts tell, let’s say, a red from a white in a
blind test?... more»
The greatest generation. Yes, it showed nobility in its brave
response to Pearl Harbor. But don’t forget, it was also the last lynching
generation... more»
While tool-making evolved to a high level in primates, other species can
do it too. Betty’s bent-wire creations show she is both a genius and a
crow... more»
Gossip. Is it corrupt, a way to spread lies and destroy lives, or
should it be viewed as an idle relaxation that enhances our grasp of human
nature?... more»
Lord Byron’s grace of a gallant, early death was the seal on his
Romantic pact. Luckily, he did not live to become fat, farcical, and
reminiscent... more»
Tricky chap, that God, seeding fossils into the ground so we’d think the
earth is very old. For Philip Henry Gosse, He moved in mysterious
ways... more»
George Orwell detested both imperialists and parlor leftists. He
recognized that oppression can turn the oppressed into rotten people
too... more»
Billy Collins’s imitations of deep thought require no mental effort
on our part. The People’s Poet just piles on “ideas” like so much soft
snow... more»
Intellectuals think their utopian schemes can be realized in a
flash. They don’t see what limits real politics: opinion, fraud, and
force... more»
Edward Teller, a monomaniac who had “several manias,” was a polar opposite
to the thin, gangly, chain-smoking, naive Robert Oppenheimer... more»
Did Al Qaida attack the U.S. to help feed starving Africans? Philos | |
