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Articles of NoteThe end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, says Hua Hsu. What will the new mainstream look like? How will whites fit into it?... more» Story after story in the U.S. media depict Mexico as a country overrun by drug gangs and murder. It’s time to say no to the stereotype... more» She stole his heart, so he gave her his kidney. She filed for divorce and now he wants it back. Only the lawyers are happy... more» Our DNA deals each of us a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes: curiosity, ambition, empathy, love of novelty or security. For Steven Pinker, it’s my genome, myself... more» Felix Mendelssohn was for most of the 19th century considered the equal of Beethoven and Bach. What happened?... more» When people posed for portraits in the 19th century, they tried to convey status, character, modernity. For photography, not much has changed... more» Cities: centers of intellectual life, politics, art, and the new. Also: cholera, grime, and kinds of exhausting buzz that actually harm the human brain... more» The culture wars haven’t ended, they’ve just reached an ugly stalemate, says Liz McMillen. Consider David Horowitz’s recent visit to the MLA... more» Hannah Arendt is still a thinker for our time, says Adam Kirsch: a time when failed states have again and again become the settings for mass murder... more» Who Checks the Spell-Checkers? Microsoft Word’s dictionary is old and outdated, says Chris Wilson... more» Obama has charisma, regarded as a feature you cannot ever really understand. No, say others, you can analyze charisma, break it down into parts... more» While impoverished Rwandans bear the costs of conservation and saving the gorillas, the national tourism industry reaps millions... more» Mone was bored, so she pulled out her old diaries to write a novel about her life. She curled up in bed and began typing on her mobile phone... more» Simply vilifying the rich, with strikes and class violence, have lost their lustre for Venezuelans. After Hugo Chávez, maybe real democracy... more» The Stilwell Road: more than a thousand U.S. troops died building the road in Burma. For some in China and India today, this neglected route is a lifeline... more» From early on, Samuel Huntington drew vociferous critics, but that is the mark of a scholar with an important message, says Francis Fukuyama... more» Pro-Stalinist books – journalism, fiction, pseudo-history – are found all over the bookstalls of Russia today. Even school history texts... more» Asked where he’d be willing to go to teach philosophy, the young job seeker replied, “Anywhere on the planet, paid or not”... more» Samuel P. Huntington, versatile scholar whose idea of a “clash of civilizations” was vastly influential, is dead at 81... Forbes ... WSJ ... Wash Post ... London Times ... Harvard Did the universe exist before it existed, bouncing back even then from a previous collapse and bounce? Ad infinitum... more» Changes in China that began with Deng Xiaoping were matters of subterfuge as much as new ideas, says Gordon Chang... part 1 ... part 2 ... part 3 ... part 4 Burger King perfume. That conquest may be yours, if only you can make yourself smell like a Whopper hot off the grill... more» Baffled Americans hoping to understand that very European hero, Tintin, should look at him through the prism of post-war France... more» Pay close attention to those Greek riots, says Robert Kaplan. At a time of economic upheaval, they may presage problems elsewhere in the world in 2009... more» Harold Pinter, playwright who could find the ominous in the everyday, is dead at the age of 78... NYT ... Telegraph ... London Times ... Guardian ... Independent ... Wash Post ... London Times ... Guardian ... a negative view. Your ad on Arts & Letters Daily puts you in contact with writers, editors, and opinion makers around the globe. Our traffic stats are impressive... more info Pope Benedict is not infallible, but he’s not omnifallible either. Save the rain forests, he urges. Okay, but save mankind from homosexuality?... more» ... more» In his campaign, Obama declared the U.S. must “lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.” The Neocons are not dead yet... more» Time for old feminists like Germaine Greer to “step aside,” she says. “It’s like, we’re grateful for what you did, but it’s time for you to hand over”... more» Gilbert Kaplan only conducts Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. Is he a charlatan? Yes, say some New York Philharmonic members... more» ... But not everyone agrees. The economic downturn has been hard for many people, but hard for economists in a special way. There are the smart guys who were supposed to know... more» Conor Cruise O’Brien, Irish politician, diplomat, and man of letters, is dead at the age of 91... Irish Times ... Jewcy ... Open Democracy ... Guardian ... London Times ... NYT ... Open Democracy ... Wash Post Carl Orff, creator of the dramatic cantata Carmina Burana, hid an ugly secret about his betrayal of a friend under the Third Reich... more» “I have great admiration for the American people,” says Chinese banker Gao Xiqing. “But you need someone to tell you the truth”... more» Stalin, violent? Yes, but extreme measures were needed to modernize an agrarian economy. That’s what Russian school kids are taught today... more» John Milton was a champion of liberty, to be sure. But in his language and outlook, he was not a modern “secular liberal”... more» Christian thinkers in the past tried to gain converts by using the categories of Taoism, the Buddha, and Confucius. This time may yet come again... more» In the North Korean prison where Shin Dong-hyuk was born and where he watched his mother hanged, inmates never saw a picture of Kim Jong Il... more» The Max Planck Institute journal is a very sober publication. So why did it run an ad for a hot Chinese strip joint on its front cover?... more» Religious couples have more children. So does belief increase fertility, or does having a big family actually cause people to be more religious?... more» Academic performance of kids in U.S. schools would be enhanced by getting rid of the worst 10% of teachers. How do you know who they are?... more» Chinese art and us: we shipped our vanguard dreams abroad and have brought home a cheaper imitation art, one with the fatal taint of melamine... more» Like a Romper Room for adults or Oprah with a whip, Judge Judy savages litigants for wasting her time. What else would she like to do for $38 million a year?... more» The deployment of Hazara policemen in Pashtun areas of Afghanistan has in the short run worked well for NATO, as it did for the British long ago... more» “What we’ve done in higher education,” said an administrator, “is let our dreams and aspirations dictate our cost structure.” For colleges, the dream is over... more» The bubble in contemporary art is about to pop. It shows all the classic features of the South Sea bubble of 1720 or the tulip madness of the 1630s... more» Baby boomers played by the rules, bought property, diversified. They now look toward less than golden retirement years... more» Naomi Klein never tempers her arguments to make converts from the center. The left does not need the mainstream center, she thinks... more» Is Lehman Bros. CEO Dick Fuld the true villain in the Wall Street collapse, or is he just the scapegoat for the sins of everyone else?... more» Stories are central to how we think about the world: from the individual to the wide sweep of history. To think yourself into the mind of another... more» Marion Cook, “greatest Negro violinist.” Maybe: yet both too far and in ways too close to our times, Cook’s music is not what we want in our iPods... more» What do girls want? A new series of vampire novels throws light onto the complexities of female adolescent desire. Caitlin Flanagan explains... more» British men and women are now the most sexually promiscuous people in any big western industrial nation, a new study shows... more» Jørn Utzon, visionary architect of one of the greatest buildings of the 20th century, the Sydney Opera House, is dead at the age of 90... Sydney Morning Herald ... Telegraph ... Art Daily ... NYT ... Australian ... London Times ... LAT Maybe it’s that mix of warm water and naked flesh. From the baths of Pompeii to Swiss spas, there’s something dirty about getting clean... more» Yiddish, a language once spoken by more than 10 million Jews, had a profound effect on American culture in the first half of the 20th century... more» When it comes to finding patterns of meaning in meaningless noise, human beings are incorrigible. Michael Shermer explains... more» Broccoli trees against a craggy backdrop of sourdough mountains, a lonely boat tossed on a red cabbage sea. Carl Warner’s edible fantasies... more» Manhattan is the capital of people who live alone. Yet are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it: studies show urban alienation is largely a myth... more» We are immensely fortunate to have a critic of James Wood’s talent, erudition, and judgment. But if criticism follows his lead, it will end up in a desert... more» In web searches, scholars tend to follow one hyperlink to the next, in a journey that resembles a plunge down a rabbit hole. Is this any way to do research?... more» The history of the bagel is not just a history of Jews in America – it is a history of America itself. How else to explain a bagel with Swiss cheese and ham?... more» “Pick me as a mate,” says the peacock. “I must be a fit guy, since I carry this wild, colorful tail around with me and still survive”... more» George W. Bush’s nostrils always ran ahead of his mind, twitching like a bull in a rodeo or a frisking wild horse, hinting at danger to come... more» In meritocracy – or so it seemed fifty years ago – we would look up to the best of us. It turns out now, however, that we look up to celebrities. A big difference... more» John Milton, boring? Paradise Lost has a little bit of something for everybody. Hot sex! Hellfire! Some damned good poetry, too... more» Who’d want to make a movie that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting? Thomas Kinkade, obviously. But who could possibly sit through it?... more» “I’ve seen too many peoples dismissed as not ready for self-government,” says Condoleezza Rice. Latin Americans, Asians, Africans – even black Americans... more» At a time when Chinese financial power is so strong, the U.S. government is – alas! – in no mood to hear about the murder of Falun Gong members... more» Distorting art market perceptions. The auction houses use one price for their presale estimates then inflate the actual sale results with their own premium... more» Greenland has rich deposits of oil, zinc, and diamonds. But will independence from Denmark do anything about its suicide rate?... more» The N-word is flourishing among young hip-hop Latinos. Should we care? Raquel Cepeda asks the question... more» An early rival to win the prize for a way to find longitude at sea was a chap from Yorkshire named Jeremy Thacker. Now it seems both he and his ideas were a hoax... more» Eat local? Cold storage for that local fruit may produce more carbon dioxide than shipping New Zealand apples to your market... more» Malcolm Gladwell, one critic fears, “has come to his own tipping point, or – to be fuddy-duddy – fork in the road. This way, guru. That way, serious writer”... more» Pairing writer with subject is an art, says NYRB editor Robert Silvers. Like the late Barbara Epstein, he feels an “intense admiration for wonderful writers”... more» A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From that moment, human company never quite matched up... more» Avoiding clichés isn’t rocket science. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of just being your own fairly unique self. And not saying things you shouldn’t of... more» John Leonard, critic with a vast range and a wondrous way with metaphors, is dead at the age of 69... AP ... Chronicle Review ... NY Observer ... Wash Post ... Kansas City Star ... NYT ... Slate ... Boston Globe Michael Crichton, who delighted lovers of his fiction and enraged environmentalists, is dead at the age of 66... NYT ... AP ... Reason ... Wash Post ... James Fallows ... LAT ... NY Observer ... London Times ... NYT ... Bloomberg ... USAToday ... Wired ... Info Week ... Weekly Standard ... Crichton on Green religion “Poverty and disadvantage are a better preparation for success than wealth and capitalizing on advantage.” Malcolm Gladwell wonders... more» No matter the money or effort you lavish on your body, regardless of pampering or cholesterol monitoring, it has no future. Your genes know this... more» The human moral sense is neither the one nor the other: it is, Jonathan Haidt can show, both biologically evolved and culturally sensitive... more» “I want to make damn sure there’s a tape recorder running for my last words.” No fake deathbed conversions for Richard Dawkins... more» Studs Terkel, “guerilla journalist” who turned the voices of ordinary Americans into a font of history, is dead at the age of 96... Chic Tribune ... Sun-Times ... LAT ... NYT ... Edward Rothstein A cache of the earliest ever classical music recordings, made in Russia by music lover Julius Block in the 1890s, have now come to light... more» Love and hate: the same brain circuitry is used in both extreme emotions – except that hate retains at least a semblance of rationality... more» Martin Luther sparked the Reformation in Wittenberg 500 years ago. While the city still uses Luther to attract tourists, only 10% of its people are Protestant... more» Do tales of witchcraft and wizardry, Harry Potter novels, for instance, have a negative effect on children? Richard Dawkins wants to know... more» At last, for a mere $100,000, you can clone your dog or cat, and own it – or a genetic Xerox of it – for the rest of your life... more» Ever since he could speak, Brandon, now 8, has insisted that he was meant to be a girl. So his parents decided to go with his wishes. An easy case? Not exactly... more» Pollsters take a lot of abuse, but polls are valid guides to the citizenry: not just in politics, but in life circumstances, priorities, hopes and fears... more» From Amazon.com directly to into your hippocampus. You won’t have to read War and Peace, you’ll just download it into your brain. Something like that... more» Catholic culture wars. As T.S. Eliot well knew, tradition can’t be blindly inherited, but has to be recovered for every age, at the cost of great labor... more» Over 900 died in the most infamous mass suicide in American history. Letters now throw light on one Los Angeles family’s Jonestown story... more» Odd entries hang their wikiexistence on “scholarly” notes to Dr. Who and Star Trek – TV shows Wikipedia folk dignify as the “canon”... more» Darwin might not have loved botox, but he would have understood why women in particular are keen to smoothe those wrinkles... more» Many scholars think media manipulate the masses, turning ordinary people into emotional mobs. They never see themselves in the mob... more» Well, Excuuuuuse Meee! Most murders begin with a trivial insult. Then there are political campaigns. Emily Yoffe explains... more» Trust and responsibility. With their mass readership drifting away, newspapers must focus on the “leadership audience”... more» Life without my noisy boy. “You can’t tell just by looking at us. There isn’t even a name for parents who have lost children”... more» Glenn Loury’s mother first explained to him how someone could be “black,” though they looked “white.” Race identity involved personal choice... more» Beneath the picturesque German landscape lie thousands of unexploded bombs, each more and more unstable with every passing day... more» The Dickinson sisters’ neighbor was quite shocked: “I went in there one day, and in the drawing room I found Emily reclining in the arms of a man”... more» Gordon Gekko no more lived on Wall Street than you live on Main Street. To work through the current mess, we need precise names and precise addresses too... more» Prodigies like Picasso may start with a clear idea of what they want and then execute it. Late bloomers like Cézanne grow into their art as into life... more» David Levine, whose brilliant caricatures have charmed readers of the New York Review of Books for 44 years, is going blind... more» Is the electorate stupid? No, just human, and thus predictably irrational. Of course, that in itself may be bad enough... more» Biodiversity. Life is more varied in the warm climes near the equator. Making sense of that has confounded biologists for 200 years... more» Does religion make people nicer? Only if they think Big Brother in the Sky is watching. Ronald Bailey explains... more» French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize for Literature... more» ... more» ... more» If the Nobel Committee lived in an alternative universe... more» “This is the most important election in American history.” Yeah, they say that for every election that comes along... more» Bernard-Henri Lévy and his friend Michel Houellebecq have had enough: “France has vomited on us for too long”... more» In 1947, a Bedouin herder tossed a stone in a cave on the Dead Sea, and heard the shattering of pottery. This led him to some dark parchment fragments... more» The 9/11 Truthers have found some new friends, as the Russian government warms to their psychotic conspiracy fantasies... more» “Classical music audiences are going gray and will soon die.” Yeah, sure. And when was it not so?... more» ... more» What has long been known to all who pay attention is now official: the Nobel lit prize committee doesn’t have a clue... more» ... more» ... more» The idea of a pristine Amazon jungle, untouched by humans, is a myth, a creation of the Western imagination... more» Why does loneliness feel cold and sin feel dirty? Our inner emotional states touch deep metaphors that stretch across cultures... more» Yes, men are hopeless on dates, and tend to say the most idiotic things. On the other hand, women can be stupid too. Why not try a little humor?... more» We’ve been around for two million years, says Stephen Hawking. To last another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before... more» Nietzsche knew best. Morality comes not from society, not from pure reason. It is innate. To know it, we need experimental philosophy... more» Iliad and Odyssey: Homer’s tales of pride and rage, massacre and homecoming, have insinutated themselves in our minds and culture... more» It’s the office China’s writers and artists dread and hate most: the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. Ha Jin explains... more» When you were a kid, were automobile headlights eyes for you? Was that chrome grill a set of teeth? You were not alone... more» Where do old clothes end up? They may not be worth much at the Salvation Army, but they are big business in Haiti... more» A scorched-earth policy toward museums and monuments of historic and artistic value is the Russian way in the attack on Georgia... more» Rupert Murdoch is utterly without charm. He does not do introspection. He’s right there before you: what you see is what you get... more» Do you hate those wretched, sweet floral perfumes? Try a dab of “Wet pavement” or “In the library” behind the ear... more» Philosophy is not for everyone, says Kelly Jolley. “It’s aristocratic in the sense that any selection based on talent is aristocratic”... more» Group cohesion may be one reason for the global reach of story telling. Another is that fiction is a proving ground for vital social skills... more» Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, with its statistics, anecdotes, and horror stories, still makes a compelling case... more» If there’s anyone unaffected by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it’s the Lehman family. They’ve moved on... more» ... more» Piano recitals in the 19th century often resembled The Ed Sullivan Show more than the serious, hushed concerts of today... more» Democracy on the wane? In country after country, democratic reforms are in retreat. Blame the middle class... more» The book business as we know it will not live happily ever after. Even this era of decline may one day look like the last great golden age... more» Creationism should be taught in science classes as a legitimate point of view, says the Royal Society of Great Britain... more» ... update ... Reiss resigns The more women and men have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their Mars and Venus personalities seem to diverge... more» First move for a con man: tell your victim a story that reveals your similar anxieties, and forge a “mutual understanding”... more» David Foster Wallace, writer of dark, manic irony, has committed suicide... NYT ... NYT appraisal ... WP ... LAT From Casanova’s first orgasm to Bob Hope’s last jokes, history is a series of landmarks, both inspiring and absurd... more» A Tiger’s Tale. In Texas, where you can own a pet tiger, the booming exotic animal trade has grim consequences... more» There’s a 1/1000 chance that you, your family, and the whole human race will die. So where’s the precautionary principle when you really need it?... more» Ben Franklin liked to present himself as a small-town boy bewildered in the big city. This urbane, highly intelligent man was anything but... more» South Bend, Indiana is an unlikely place for a thriving Russian community with a high percentage of piano virtuosos, but history has strange twists... more» Jimmy Slyde was not just a tap dancer: his slides were an expressive idiom for him to tease the beat, to delay and then catch up... more» ... video Beyond boozy comradeship felt toward strangers in bars, and a few moments of euphoria, what’s to be said for being a sports fan?... more» They don’t read Paul Theroux in English departments. “I’m too rude about people,” he says. We do live in a sensitive age... more» Behavioral economics is not just a gizmo added to traditional economics; it is a big departure that will deliver a new way of seeing the world... more» After a full day at the office, Franz Kafka had dinner and got to writing about 11:00 PM. And what if he’d had more time?... more» Why are kids so unimaginative? Yes, that was the question Teresa Belton asked. For an answer look at TV and daydreaming... more» Otto Preminger, hearing a group of fellow émigrés speaking Hungarian, said, “Don’t you people know you’re in Hollywood? Speak German.” He had a point... more» Ossetian hero: Victor Kaloyev murdered the air controller he felt had killed his wife and children. Now out of prison, he finds new fields for revenge... more» International terrorism, for now, is but a puny apocalypse. But at any moment, with the right weapon, it could go from nothing to everything... more» In the 1949 Revolution, a few Americans went to China to help build the Maoist dream. Sixty years later, one of them is still there... more» Is there a performance drug that could actually increase the fairness of sports contests? Yes, there is. Carl Elliott on beta blockers... more» The Cuban judge sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book. The sentence for opposing the Revolution: thirty years... more» The mini-cow is the solution to rising food prices. No taller than a German shepherd, it gives 16 pints of milk a day. Plus, it mows the lawn... more» Hans Monderman loved cars. But he wondered if mature automobile societies could, in essence, act like adults. He was the Traffic Guru... more» Save the Males: feminism today has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society, says Kathleen Parker... more» “She’s imaginative, clever, educated,” says Karl Lagerfeld, who has used Carla Bruni as a model. “She knows how to behave”... more» Human brains evolved to be belief engines: we want to explain everything, including our deepest mystical experiences... more» |
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New BooksIn New York, Herbert Spencer was feted at a Delmonico’s banquet. The fawning tributes bored him, while his audience was baffled by his speech... more» Jonathan Bate has written as enthralling, as eloquent an evocation of Shakespeare as one is likely ever to encounter... more» Many politicians, Hollywood stars, and NGOs have fallen in love with Hugo Chávez, treating him as a savior of the poor... more» Might artistic talent have evolved as a kind of ornamental capacity analogous to the peacock’s tail? Some people think so... more»
In 1973, Morton Smith shook the world of Christian scholarship. Was there a secret “evil” version of Mark’s Gospel?... more» The accommodation by politicians was bad enough. Even more depressing was the role of artists and intellectuals in occupied France... more» Being human is not a simple matter of stimulus and response: it is shaped by history, thought, time, and space – not to mention tears, snot, and earwax... more» After the war, Germans liked stories of gallant resistance to the Nazis, especially Claus von Stauffenberg and the doomed plot to blow up Hitler... more» Mark Bittman’s approach to food is one of ease, simplicity, and quality: this means he walks a fine and constantly shifting line... more» Those Pre-Rafaelite oddfellows: Ruskin’s inability to consummate his marriage runs parallel to Rossetti’s inability to resist seducing everyone he met... more» Snark: a nasty, knowing strain of abuse that spreads like pinkeye through the national conversation, schoolyard taunts without the schoolyard... more» When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, many Britons thought it was the beginning of the end of their empire. Still, it took a while... more» Life’s modest pleasures: walking, cooking, fishing, napping, sitting in silence, and enjoying chocolate. All are legal... more» Kafkaesque: the nonchalant intrusion of the bizarre and horrible into everyday life, the subjection of ordinary people to an inscrutable fate... more» How would William Randolph Hearst have reacted to the rise of the Internet? He knew war and politics would still make or break a news company... more» Even with aesthetic tastes, we are like our ancient ancestors in sharing a love of communion with others through art. Our art instinct is theirs... more» Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed was written for those who, like the author, were committed both to faith and reason... more» Arthur Miller’s answer to Joe McCarthy, The Crucible, compared him to a 17th-century witch hunter. But communists were not witches, they were real... more» Disraeli, with his olive complexion and coal black eyes, was an English Jew at a time when being English and Jewish was inconceivable... more» Charles Ives disparaged “sissy” musicians and bewailed the feminization of American musical life. He was a hard case... more» The Great Books of the Western World were icons of unreadability: 32,000 pages of tiny, double-column, eye-straining type. But oh, did they sell... more» It was a historical cataclysm carried out on an unimaginable scale. Stalin’s regime devoured not just human lives but hopes, dreams, trust... more» Leopold Bloom: son, father, lover, friend, warrior, man at arms – ordinary, yet a “complete human being.” Everyman for Modernism, says Peter Gay... more» Giordano Bruno was a martyr, but to what? He was both too late and too early to paint a universe in which man was not the center of a cozy domain... more» Awful modernist art can be easily ignored. But disagreeable architecture – concrete façades on a human-repelling scale – is much harder to avoid... more» Charlie Chaplin loved scenes where a beautiful young mother is torn away from her terrified, weeping child. It was about his life... more» Abd al-Rahman’s Muslim Iberia was much advanced over Western Christendom in 800. If Charles Martel had lost at Poitiers, the world would be better off... more» Victor Gruen, Jewish socialist refugee from Vienna and father of the shopping mall, a man who changed the American way of life... more» We live in a maniacally fast and busy world. Do we wish to continue our detachment from the cycles of the sun and moon and tides and planets?... more» The dark side of the human animal is not wolf-like, as Hobbes suggested, it is ape-like. The wolf is a noble beast... more» Congolese, French, Spanish, Houma, and Haitian peoples make the story of New Orleans a tale that stands for the entire New World... more» Iceland’s epic poems turn an implacably cold gaze on human brutality, nobility, pettiness, glory and misery. Halldór Laxness lived in this tradition... more» “I am alive ... I am beautiful ... what else is there?” Susan Sontag’s journals reveal much about her anxieties and passions... more» Between margin scribbles, the selection itself, and even a hair tucked between pages, Hitler’s personal library brings us creepily closer to the man... more» “The knell of private property sounds,” wrote Karl Marx. ”The expropriators are being expropriated.” Hardly. Look at the Bolsheviks... more» How odd that so many physicians write so well. From Anton Chekhov to Somerset Maugham to William Carlos Williams – to Theodore Dalrymple... more» Rupert Murdoch is an idiot savant who instinctively mines human weakness. He knows people need to justify giving in to their lowest impulses... more» Pixies, sheilas, and dirtbags. If you go on a whizzer and get a tad squiffy (if not starkers) with cougar bait, then expect to be a little rumpty-tumpty the next day... more» She may have been a“half-witted canary” to Lytton Strachey, but Bloomsbury’s most brilliant mind, John Maynard Keynes, fell for her still... more» Is it possible to create art out of horror, the 9/11 disaster, for instance, without being exploitative and tasteless?... more» The Nobel prizes owe their historic place not to any special Scandinavian wisdom, but to the sheer size of the prize purses... more» James Joyce for most of us is black words on a white page, the pure spirit of the English language. But to hear his actual Dubliner’s voice... more» Nothing To Be Frightened Of is, it hardly need be said, an ironic title. Julian Barnes is in fact scared as hell of death... more» Our political order depends on modern science and its blessings, yet science also corrodes the kind of moral judgments democracy also requires... more» We can’t help feeling that we should be improved by reading Lionel Trilling, and this feeling itself is inevitably oppressive... more» Jennifer McLagan cooks with glorious, filthy rich fat, set off in her recipes against bitter greens, bright acids, and sharp-tasting herbs... more» The Soviet mentality is being reborn in Russia. It is a return not to the terror of the 1930s, but to the drab, oppressed life of the 1970s... more» Sarah Caldwell was formidable with a baton. She was also an artist so tragically blind to her own failings that she was never able to master them... more» Question: Why is there any evil at all in God’s creation? Answer: Because this is the best of all possible worlds. Not for you, not for me, but in the longest run... more» Slavoj Žižek: philosopher whose comedy and hyperbole, whose allusions to movies and video games mask a descent into a pit of moral and intellectual squalor... more» Malcolm Gladwell: a walking Reader’s Digest 2.0 whose pop science anecdotes boil down to dumb, flattering, homespun homilies... more» “The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man,” Niall Ferguson says. It has taken us from poverty to the giddy heights of prosperity... more» American museums have their fair share of Rembrandts, Vermeers, Titians, El Grecos, and Raphaels. Yes, but it isn’t about what’s fair... more» Anti-intellectualism in presidential speeches is a serious problem because of the way it allows public discourse to be infected with demagoguery... more» Thirty years since the revolution in Iran, and young Iranians burrow tunnels under the walls the regime uses to isolate them from the West. Consider sex... more» Kingsley Amis lamented the English village pub, where drink and tobacco brought people together in ways that respected and overcame their shyness... more» He has told of the “barbarism” of African societies and has fixated on public defecation when writing about India. V.S. Naipaul wants to wound... more» Who can take sex addiction seriously as a problem? Isn’t it a bit like tennis addiction? Maybe so, but this is one impairment that does sell books... more» Adamantine, hard from the start, John Milton’s English poetry aspires to biblical Hebrew and, for good or ill, succeeds... more» Flying ducks hung on flocked wallpaper: what do the material possessions of working-class people of London tell us about them?... more» Paul Auster’s narrative voice is as hypnotic as that of the Ancient Mariner. Start one of his books and by page two you cannot choose but hear... more» Connoisseurs take serious interest in the high arts of painting, music, and literature. Why is great perfume not seen in the same class?... more» Overparenting. Conservatives fear we’re turning our kids into pampered ninnies (i.e., Democrats); liberals think we’re raising selfish robots (Republicans)... more» Did Proust anticipate the course of 20th-century American literature? Edmund Wilson thought so, and that Thornton Wilder’s novels were proof... more» Franz Kafka was sufferer and victim, the tormented subject of nightmares. But also a master of nightmares, even a connoisseur of them... more» “And move next to some gay people.” Richard Florida argues it is not weather that maketh a city, but arts and culture and good restaurants... more» That Britannica set was to sit in your home merely as a reference tool. Those forbidding Great Books, however, were actually meant to read... more» ... more» China may be ugly and soulless, but Paul Theroux retains a sickened fascination for India, a land that is trapped between hypermodernity and medievalism... more» The weird world of art. How do so many different views and kinds of art jell into a rough consensus about what art is in the first place?... more» Are atheists nastier than religious folk? Some believers seem to think so. But maybe they are the very ones who make atheists nasty... more» Ludwig Wittgenstein was an arresting mix of monk, mystic, and mechanic. His family home in childhood is best described as a madhouse... more» Mortimer Adler and the Great Books. Yes, it was all rather earnest. But with humane studies having fallen to theory and politics, nostalgia is justified... more» V.S. Naipaul has always been a sadist and a smell-smock and a coxcomb, and he’s always enjoyed it. But why does he so want us to know it?... more» Geoff Nicholson likes walking the streets and lanes of London. Sure, but how can he also enjoy to walk the car-glutted streets of Los Angeles?... more» Samuel de Champlain never learned to swim, yet shot American rapids in bark canoes and starting in 1599 crossed the Atlantic 27 times without losing a ship... more» “A monster that must be put back in its place”? Heavens, no. Finance is a mirror that shows mankind its true face, warts and all... more» If there was ever a man who fit Comte de Buffon’s idea of genius as the capacity for taking pains, it’s Charles M. Schulz... more» “Oh dear, oh dear, how I sometimes wish I were respectable and dead,” he wrote. Now Benjamin Britten is both... more» Samuel Adams burned letters the British might use against him. He wasn’t playing for the history books, he was trying to plot a revolution... more» Loneliness: more and more people in the U.S. and across the globe now live alone and say they have no close confidant... more» ... more» Silent muses: three women who suffered immensely because they were tied to three men of artistic genius – Cézanne, Monet, and Rodin... more» Travel writing has often been a form of escape. Not so with V.S. Naipaul, who wants only to transform experience into art... more» Hollywood’s judgments on its movies have been as self-regarding and boneheaded as those of academics have been faddish. Then there is David Thomson... more» “Virginia Woolf’s public sympathy with the lives of poor women was always at odds with private recoil.” Consider her servants... more» ... more» Rimbaud, Hefner, Lennon, Eminem: how fascinating to watch these men, as they age, grow from being rebels to being rather lovable chaps... more» The Florence Nightingale of myth was gentle and gracious. In truth, she was acerbic and uncompromising in her fight for cleaner, better hospitals... more» Mia Farrow’s plan to get Blackwater into Darfur may look like an odd fantasy of a rich eccentric, but war-hungry celebrities are a serious threat... more» The massacre of Gen. Elphinstone’s army of 16,000 soldiers and camp followers in Afghanistan in 1842 prompted revenge attacks. They did not help... more» Charles Schulz’s one regret: he never once let Charlie Brown kick the football held out for him by Lucy. What was it about that unkicked football?... more» It is not just an idea, it can now and again be a real feeling: that English is not really your language; rather, you are merely its speaker... more» Han van Meegeren fecit. The spectre of forgery chills the receptiveness, the will to believe, without which the experience of art cannot occur... more» Paul Theroux has spent many a night trying to sleep in yet another smelly rail car shared with strangers. For his readers’ pleasure, of course... more» Katherine Mansfield’s moods went from feverish glee to raging discontent. She was vicious when cornered; her friends slipped in and out of favor... more» Thrasymachus thought it better to try to be happily unjust, than stupidly just. Does Raymond Geuss follow in his line?... more» Gore Vidal’s mocking, disenchanted patriotism will always be a resource for all who wish the American republic well... more» In 1885, Czar Alexander III gave the Czarina an astonishing Easter present: an exquisite egg of gold, diamonds, and rubies made by Carl Fabergé... more» When Keats wrote of “some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken” he meant Herschel. Science dazzled the Romantics... more» Emily Post’s own life story testifies to the redemptive power of repression. She became Emily Post by doing what Emily Post advised... more» Heston Blumenthal’s fiendish recipes will not be tried by many. Green tea and vodka in liquid nitrogen, snail porridge, smoky bacon ice cream... more» Knabenphysik: Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac: none achieved anything as important after age thirty as they had before... more» Math wasn’t Einstein’s strong point, but how bad was he? Very, very bad, says a ruthless new book... more» Sam Johnson defined a lexicographer as “a harmless drudge.” He never foresaw the armed and dangerously funny Roy Blount Jr.... more» Much of the perfume-buying public sprays itself with high-priced smells that are the fragrance equivalent of airport novels... more» In the well-scrubbed West, it’s easy to assume that personal cleanliness is an objective matter. So try a visit to India... more» For the uninformed youngster who thinks easy sex was ever the way, Philip Roth’s strange new novel may be the perfect back-to-school gift... more» ... more» For Dostoevsky, murderers, suicides, child molesters, and blasphemers actually quicken the deepest Christian faith... more» Madame de Staël brought to the world a mixture of self-regard, self-delusion, and raw, overpowering intellect. And other charms as well... more» Patrons can make life easier for artists. But while the money may be good, it tends to come with strings, or even handcuffs, attached... more» Star, raconteur, mensch. Cheeta has at last told all, and you’ll never again think of Hollywood memoirs in the same way... more» Yes, he’s a celeb who wears pricey suits. But Bernard-Henri Lévy is a real-deal philosopher, too, one who gives us much to ponder... more» One of the saddest stories of the 20th century is the fate of air travel. In 1900 it was a dream. By 1999 it was a tedious chore... more» Can we ever know what was in the hearts of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, the man who owned her?... more» China was once thought to have no great tradition of science and invention. The reversal in thinking on this question is owed to Joseph Needham... more» “Libertarian paternalism” is a phrase with more than a whiff of paradox about it. Is it a third way for politics and economics?... more» Richard Rorty said no standpoint outside human descriptions exists from which to decide truth or falsity. He was a corrupter of the youth... more» A man must be adaptable to win in life, he said. Yet Niccolò Machiavelli, the ultimate expert in winning, lost it all... more» Simon Schama’s hero in his latest book is America, vindicated by history as a land of everlasting optimism... more» Han Van Meegeren: a second-rate painter who turned to forgeries for easy money in the 1920s. And what money he made... more» We live in an age of autobiography. Yet what twenty-something has earned the right to publish her spiritual journey?... more» In the summer of 1857, an emigrant wagon train from Arkansas was massacred as it crossed Utah. The killers were not Paiutes, but Mormons... more» Pompeii: a city where dogs howl, late-night drunks carouse, there are not enough lavatories, and everyone has bad breath... more» Oscar Wilde was a man made of books, from Plato to Pater. The story of his libraries is the story of his life... more» Proust can keep his madeleines. For some people, nothing brings back childhood like the inky smell of Batman comics... more» White Castle created the template in 1916 for all fast-food restaurants in the world. And thus was the hamburger born... more» Sushi is just what “White People” want: foreign, expensive, healthy, and hated by the uneducated. White People are not snobs or anything... more» It’s not enough to be antifascist; one must also be in principle antitotalitarian. That about sums up Bernard-Henri Lévy... more» In Heinrich Himmler’s view, Slavs were “Mongol types” to be replaced with blond Aryans in the east. Russians were mere “redskins”... more» Every unhappy book launch is unhappy in its own way, except when it involves Islam. Then the plot is rather familiar... more» Fables for children work not by pointing to a moral but by complicating moral thinking. Consider Babar the Elephant... more» In 1940, Churchill sent a group of young, handsome British officers to Washington to charm the power elite and... more» Feeling a sense of loss for a God you don’t believe in anyway? Isn’t the idea rather soppy, Mr. Barnes?... more» The entry of Britain and France into the Greek War of Independence is the first humanitarian intervention. It wasn’t the last... more» A black hole is a kind of one-way gate in the universe: Stuff can fall in, but nothing comes out. Easy, eh? Not exactly... more» Whatever divides religion and atheism, much more important is the potential of both to promote a sense of compassion ... more» Wittgenstein family: among the richest, most talented and eccentric in Europe, a family of geniuses and suicides... more» In 1904, Max Factor huddled in a forest with his wife and children, hunted by the Czar’s men. Hollywood was still a long way off... more» Intelligent Design tries with evidence and logic to show that life was designed by an intelligent agency competent to the task... more» Why are some countries rich, others poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England? Why is Africa still mired in poverty?... more» “Interface” for “meet”? Maybe soon the word it will become a synonym for “kiss,” as in: “Interface me, baby!”... more» What are lies, and what do they mean in political life today? Jacques Lacan has no answers, just dinner party anecdotes... more» A great contribution of the 20th century was to let the chaos and cadences of the world, the sounds of the street, into music... more» Josef Stalin hated genetics: if genes are physical structures passed down through generations then nature isn’t changeable... more» Except for issues of cleanliness, sex, and food, the British are just like Yanks. Oh, yes, and then there’s language... more» “Organic food” may bring to mind hairy people peddling goat cheese. But we also might think back to Edmund Burke and the 18th century... more» Bernard-Henri Lévy, a Sartre in billowy, unbuttoned white shirt, has his finger on the geopolitical zeitgeist like no other philosopher... more» Julian Barnes is not frightened about dying but not happy, either. “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”... more» Bacardi Rum had been a patriotic firm with a long history of supporting social welfare reforms in Cuba. Then along came Castro... more» When Giordano Bruno mounted the pyre, a crucifix was held to his face. A witness says that he turned away angrily... more» Emily Dickinson’s gnomic poems go down like shots of triple-distilled whiskey. After the jolt, they radiate... more» The tabloids create an alternative universe each week for four or five million people clutching their quarters at supermarket check-out racks... more» Most conquerors try to convert their subjects. Hitler’s empire was built on the idea of exterminating the natives... more» Going Off the Rawls. How libertarians have adopted the liberal left’s favorite modern philosopher... more» | |
Essays and OpinionLiteracy, the most empowering achievement of our civilization, is to be replaced by a vague and ill-defined screen savvy. All in the name of progress... more» W.H. Auden, E.M. Forster, William Empson, and Philip Larkin: four men who lived and died by, with, and for the English language. Steven Isenberg had lunch with them all... more» A solipsistic pursuit of happiness by people who live close to one another can, alas, result in conflict. Our egotism creates a hostile environment for us... more» The Internet is not like print. Google or YouTube alone can seriously impede on the free flow of ideas. It’s not your father’s censorship... more» Lines like Milton’s, “Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live,” make the Scots bristle. That damnable English sense of superiority... more» Solving the world’s problems may require both scientific and religious attitudes, argues Frederick Grinnell: two different types of faith, not just the one or the other... more» There remains a place for morality in world affairs, but what of civilization, and its step-child, imperialism. Mark Mazower meditates on a fraught relationship... more» Do you suffer from blogaholism, Twitteritis, RSS Dependency, or Status Update Disorder? Then Polly Frost has the seminar for you... more» Whence the fear and contempt in modern art of such qualities as beauty and tenderness towards the world? How about our inflamed egotism?... more» The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has not stopped big nations from holding nukes. It has only killed off the protest against nuclear weapons themselves... more» Materialism, consumerism, owning things, is bad. Self-denial is good. So if I limit what I own to 100 objects, are my shoes one thing or two?... more» If sociologists ignore the genetic components of human behavior and sociality, will other academics – and the wider world – ignore sociology?... more» Time was when a responsible person in the West was someone who entertained firm moral and political principles. But is moral relativism defensible as a principle?... more» Printing – electricity – radio – antibiotics: after them, nothing was the same. Intellectual impresario John Brockman asks a select group of thinkers, “What will change everything?”... more» Time is the stuff of music: it plays with the rhythm of experience. If the world of physics is a space-time continuum, music is a pitch-time continuum... more» Last June, one expert told the public that the art market only goes up: “For the first time since 1914, we are in a non-cyclical market.” Tulips, anyone?... more» Germans don’t always find it easy to come to terms with their past. The Nazis come to mind, of course, but there is also the Baader-Meinhof gang... more» What made Harold Pinter a fine dramatist – free association, unreliable recollections, non-sequiturs – also made him a bad political activist... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» Africa needs Christianity, says atheist Matthew Parris. Alternatives leave Africans at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, witch doctors, mobile phones, and machetes... more» If a persuasive argument for the existence of God is wanted, then it looks like philosophy has come up empty. Of course, the devout were not exactly holding their collective breath... more» Do Jews control Hollywood? Could be. But Joel Stein wants a positive spin. Maybe, “Hollywood: now more Jews than ever!” or “Hollywood, from the people who brought you the Bible”... more» Academics, intellectuals, and skeptics prefer to think of themselves as hard to fool. Certainly not by the likes of Bernard Madoff. That’s why Stephen Greenspan’s account is so riveting... more» Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and may you have a joyous Kwanzaa! Hey, wait a minute. What happened to Kwanzaa? Kwanzaa isn’t over, is it?... more» Is Plato’s cave allegory about ascent of the soul? The true perception of the forms? Proper education? Maybe it’s about travel... more» Lord Keynes was an Aristotelian, who believed that vices are virtues carried to excess. This is a good economic philosophy for us today, says Robert Skidelsky... more» André Bernard senses a sad, vague shift in the cultural landscape: the quirky, creaky business which produces that most desirable and perfect of objects – the book – is perishing... more» Darwinian science does not offer easy answers to all the pressing social questions of the day. But evolution gives social science a new start... more» Literary prize-fighting. The sniping, the joke awards, the populist panels: Tom Chatfield looks at the tired landscape of literary prizes... more» Nobody knows why we respond to music with such deep emotions, though theories abound. Mental cheesecake? Sexual display? Intensified natural sounds?... more» The U.S. has its financial problems, but it is much too early to conclude that the American century is finished, or that China solo is about to take over... more» Appearing to be sick is not a goal chosen by an hysteric so much as it is one gradually assumed, indeed, learned. The symptoms change with the culture... more» Most liberals once defended Salman Rushdie’s right to publish The Satanic Verses, despite offense to Muslims. Today, many would rather appease religious sensibilities... more» Literary studies force students to see works of fiction from the point of view that got their teachers tenure. But it’s the books that ought to be central, not the professor... more» High heels have never been higher and say much about sex, style, and politics. Germaine Greer asks if extreme shoes empower or constrain women... more» David Foster Wallace’s fevered writing was often witness to the agony of cognition: how the twists and turns of thought hold both the best promise of truth and worst threats to it... more» Beethoven had the classic prodigy’s trouble. He knew all about music, but didn’t know how to live and had only a hazy sense of the reality of other people... more» We need literary prophets and social critics – but also intellectual mystics, agnostic gnostics, and neuro-Buddhists. Try Aldous Huxley... more» When you have a bubble, you will get a crash. Very easy to say, very hard for equity traders to fully understand. Virginia Postrel explains... more» Teasing should not be banned in schools: kids gain with it a more complex, sophisticated, and ironic grasp of the human world. This is a social good... more» In social networks, happy and unhappy people tend to cluster separately. Each added happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%... more» “You loser!” screamed Katie, a toxic wife. “You’ve destroyed my life – just look at my hair, look at my nails! You loser, you jerk, you nobody”... more» Toy train sets, tools of childhood fantasy, had their most powerful influence before the 1950s. Yet they live again in an astonishing botanic metropolis... more» Parallels between our troubles today and the Great Depression are apparent. Did Lord Keynes have the solution to the problems then? Might his ideas work today?... more» “I only swear,” says Clive James, “because I ran out of ideas for saying the same thing better.” This applies to comedians as well... more» The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything, says Defense Secretary Robert Gates... more» She came to England to escape the Nazis, and at first appreciated her new home. By the end of her life she found the British rude, dishonest, and charmless. Why?... more» David Foster Wallace believed that each of us is marooned inside our own skull and that it is fiction’s job to “aggravate this sense of entrapment.” He was good at it... more» ... more» The heroes of Mumbai. Many Indians acted with sublime courage during the terror. Michael Pollack has a harrowing but inspiring story to tell... more» There were many other heroes as well. Barack Obama is not America’s first black president. He is the country’s first biracial, bicultural president. This is a big difference, as Marie Arana explains... more» Mumbai is a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia. It means money, freedom, flashy cars and flashier women. That is why they hate it... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» ... more» Hitler and sex. The fixation on Hitler’s sexuality, on his alleged perversity, is the very apex of cultural stupidity. Ron Rosenbaum explains why... more» Anthropology is at war with itself, split into two schools: social anthropologists on one side, evolutionary anthropologists on the other... more» “We won’t need a guidebook,” he said, with an affected nonchalance. “These are look-and-do mountains.” But they weren’t, not in the least... more» The Dragon Well Manor restaurant in Hangzhou offers guests a kind of prelapsarian Chinese cuisine in this age of industry, food scares, and pollution... more» On Facebook, John McCain was a silly old geezer out of his depth in an alien milieu. But for people of any age, how serious are Facebook “friends”?... more» So many assumptions, agendas and, distinctly iffy data behind those ubiquitous words, “research shows.” Frank Furedi explains a few of them... more» Research shows use of the word “went” declined by 32% in the NYC press since 2000. Bad economy? Global warming? Are people just going less in the past tense? It’s really ironic... more» King Lear is one of the darkest plays ever, yet Edgar, Kent, and Cordelia show a miraculous, almost irrational fidelity: they repay brutal rejection with unwavering loyalty... more» A Wall Street firm pays an ignorant 24-year-old hundreds of thousands of dollars to give stock advice to grownups. That was in the 1980s. Michael Lewis is still watching Wall Street... more» Witch hunters in Africa lynch “thieves” who rob men of their masculinity. Many people’s grasp of economics is at the same level. The Edge economics course is a curative... more» ... Class no. 1 Scandal is permanent, frozen before us. Scandals metastasize, ramify, self-replicate, clogging cable news, the blogs, and the bookstores. Scandal everywhere... more» Magicians manipulate focus and intensity of human attention, controlling what we are aware of and when. Their illusions are useful for grasping neuroscience... more» Darwinian dating. We are all animals: manhood is alpha-style toughness and cool promiscuity. Woman are just as manipulative, calculating, and driven by self-interest... more» Onion editors think up the headline first, then write story to match: “California Courts To See What Else They Can Marry” or “Study Shows Bullies Enjoy Pain of Others”... more» Has our political life really changed very much since Shakespeare’s day? Maybe it has regressed back towards it, having moved away only for a century or two... more» Condoleezza Rice said that in the Middle East, the U.S. will do the cooking and the Europeans can do the dishes. Imagine how the French, so proud of their gastronomy, took that... more» Typically full of himself, brilliant, and taking some risks, Leonard Bernstein 22 years ago delivered a rambling late-night talk on terrorism and truth... more» Marc Chagall plundered his sexual experience for raw material. Maybe that’s why his artistic style changed every time he changed women... more» So when did public intellectuals start dying out? With the invention of the Web, or was it in the days of John Stuart Mill – or ancient Athens?... more» For decades, poetry has been a way of losing money for trade publishers. Then Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn became a hit. Why?... more» “We blew it.” A bitter P.J. O’Rourke looks back in remorse on the historic chance that conservatives have taken 28 years to squander... more» Books have an almost sacred quality: only to imagine someone ripping the pages out of a book or, worse, buring it, causes a shudder... more» Barack Obama’s win marks the third straight defeat of a candidate who served in Vietnam. Clinton beat two veterans of WWII. It’s the end of war-veteran politics... more» Barack Obama’s America: richer, smarter, less white... Daniel Finkelstein ... Louis Henry Gates Jr. ... Sara Hebel ... John McWhorter ... Laurence Tribe ... Elizabeth Wurtzel ... Frank Furedi ... Anne Applebaum ... Robert Fulford ... Richard Cohen ... Joel Kotkin ... Gerard Baker ... Brendan O’Neill ... Roger Cohen ... Michael Gerson ... Ward Connerly et al. ... John Dickerson ... Irwin Stelzer ... Maureen Dowd ... Shelby Steele ... Alan Wolfe ... David Brooks ... Dissent roundup Why do Fred Astaire’s old movies still shimmer with glamour and enchantment, why do so many still find that the sight of him casts a lovely lilting glow?... more» Was Percy Shelley a co-creator of Mary’s great story, Frankenstein? Co-opter of her genius, perhaps? Her Svengali, her Max Perkins, or merely a good copy editor?... more» George Bailey (James Stewart) saved his bank by explaining to fearful creditors that banking depends on faith in your neighbors. Think that might work today?... more» It has a familiar ring: excess speculation, political mischief, and financial disaster. Defaults multiplied, banks failed. Soon troubles spread beyond real estate. The year was 1836... more» The booboisie, idiots whose primitive emotions are those “of tabby-cats rather than of men,” are the very people who elect politicians H.L. Mencken felt he knew them well... more» The Medici Bank in the 15th century had tenuous cash reserves that were usually well below 10% of total assets. Lack of liquidity was an issue for banking from the start... more» Frankenstein. A late Faust myth, or an early mad scientist story? Proletariat running amok, or the id on the rampage? Maybe the perils a man trying to have a baby without a woman... more» “Anti-Semitism has no fixed pattern. It’s like a virus that changes,” says Bernard-Henri Lévy. It is forever trying to tie itself to more acceptable beliefs... more» Libertarianism is finished. The financial collapse proves that its ideology makes no sense, argues Jacob Weisberg... more» Oh, yeah? Richard Epstein has another view. Jose Miguel Vivanco and Daniel Wilkinson put out a report in Caracas last month showing how Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights in Venezuela. When they returned to their hotel ... more» The Torture Colony. In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds... more» Pope Pius XII suffered moral agonies over his failure to do more against the Nazis. He did much to help the Jews, but hardly with enough courage to be a candidate for sainthood... more» Britons abroad belch, vomit, copulate, litter, and barge their way through foreign lands, dressed like hookers and louts: overpaid, oversexed and over there... more» Term paper mill. Need $100 by Friday to keep the lights on? No sweat, if you’re a writer. Plenty of kids need ten pages on Hamlet by Thursday... more» Picasso’s staccato performance never missed a beat: squiggle, snatch, scrawl, grab, jot, pinch, doodle, filch. A woman turned into a goat... more» The Starbucks predictor: the more frappucinos to be had in a country, the more likely that it is now facing a depression. (Well, the McDonald’s theory didn’t work either)... more» Swearing, says Steven Pinker, is a kind of word magic. People believe that some words can corrupt the moral order (foul language advisory)... more» Universities admit and take money each year from hundreds of thousands of students who are destined to fail. Is this right? Marty Nemko asks... more» Speed is but one part of the motorcycle’s inherent mystique. There is also the constant danger, and the skill and knowledge required to ride... more» The truths of blogging are provisional, its ethos collective and messy, says Andrew Sullivan. It brings writer to reader in a way that is visceral, even brutal... more» The array of worst-case natural disasters in the new “Climate Change” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History is downright biblical in character... more» From celebrity culture to white identity politics to “framing” political constructs, we are all postmodernists now. Tim Cavanaugh explains... more» Like it or not, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close, and Michael Pollan has a message for the next president... more» Lolita at fifty: is this a novel of love or lust? Is it a romantic classic or evasive testimony to perversion? James Kincaid asks the questions... more» “I love you, Gary,” quoth the bird, in its owner’s voice, thereby revealing her infidelity. Betrayed by your own parrot! It’s an old story... more» When it comes to waging war, as Ralph Peters explains, passion trumps practicality, while pride overrules rational self-interest... more» American Carol is yet another message movie: this time the conservative answer to all the efforts of Hollywood liberals. It is also a very bad film... more» The progressive, rights-based political thought of today may feel it has no use for Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. It ignores this great work at its intellectual peril... more» In the U.K., alcohol is a relaxant, an emollient, a crutch, a relief, an excuse. Sarah Lyall has many British friends who in the U.S. would be viewed as functioning alcoholics... more» False Apology Syndrome: a rich but poisonous mixture of condescension, self-importance, bad faith, loose thinking, and indifference... more» The victimization of blacks is America’s original sin, and privileged blacks have milked it without shame, says Gerald Early. It’s a sucker’s game... more» Will Russia again become a rich and influential nation? No time soon, says Murray Feshbach. Russia is not just sick, it is dying... more» In Albania, lawsuits fly over who owns or can complete buildings. Thus among Greek and Roman ruins, a new style is seen: Unfinished Brutalist Post-Communist... more» Students starting college this year likely never dialed a telephone. So began the first Mindset List, meant to show how remote students’ experience is from their teachers’... more» The White House was a mess. Drunken revelers in the lobby. Boozers romping through the bedrooms. And all this 140 years before JFK moved in... more» When people talk about today’s financial troubles, they often invoke 1929. Better that they might think back a little farther, to the Panic of 1873... more» Without beauty, art becomes a kind of fetish or idol, untested by the rest of life. Only an authentic sense of beauty can animate aesthetic experience... more» John Stuart Mill was a feminist, and there is no doubt that the engine of his feminism was his friend, lover, collaborator, and wife, Harriet Taylor... more» Sha Na Na, with greased ducktails and cigarettes rolled into T-shirt sleeves, did not so much describe the sock-hop 1950s as invent it... more» When your mortality swings into view, you can be thankful for life – and whiskey. P.J. O’Rourke has cancer, in the most humiliating place... more» Hudson River School artists wanted to paint God as manifest in nature. So can you have a Hudson River School revival without a revival of God? James Panero asks an awkward question... more» Intellectual fashions fade. “Deconstruction,” “postmodernism,” “hegemony.” The use of these words tracks their cultural importance – and they are in decline... more» Travelers want authenticity in foreign lands. But hasn’t this search become a fool’s errand? Rolf Potts is a travel writer without illusions... more» David Foster Wallace’s voice was the voice in your own head. But what was the voice in his head?... A.O. Scott ... Morgan Meis ... Joshua Ferris ... Tim Kreider ... Michiko Kakutani ... Monica Hesse ... Colby Cosh ... Mark Caro ... Sam Anderson ... Christopher Hays ... Richard Woodward ... Tim Martin ... Steve Almond ... Peter Craven ... Julian Gough ... Lev Grossman ... Sven Birkerts, Joyce Carol Oates, et al. ... Fritz Lanham ... Elizabeth Wurtzel ... Verlyn Klinkenborg ... Alex Rose ... satire When a baby is about to be born, you must boil a lot of water. And people in Biblical times had ragged clothes but perfect teeth. Yes, it’s movie wisdom... more» Leona Helmsley learned the hard way that money does not buy happiness. Nor will it buy it for her cute little dog, now also a rich bitch... more» Atheism may not be easy, but it offers the honor of facing our condition without despair or wishful thinking – with good humor, but without God... more» Is stupid making us google? Always feel like you are having to drag your wayward brain back to that gray text? So does James Bowman... more» The big one’s sold, but Damien Hirst has other rotten sharks waiting in fridges. Robert Hughes finds the whole thing obscene... more» Scrawled on that cardboard sheet: “Need money for beer, drugs, hooker. Hey, at least I’m not shittin’ you.” Panhandling is a plague... more» Liberalism’s notion that morality is merely rights and obligations empties life of ethical meaning. We need a return to pre-modern virtue ethics... more» Computer screen reading breaks down with dense argument, modernist poetry, long political tracts, and texts that need careful attention and slow reading... more» “My outrage,” says Nassim Taleb, “is aimed at the scientist-charlatan putting society at risk using statistical methods.” Bad statistics can even blow up the banking system... more» Béla Lugosi’s amalgam of nobility and evil, his narrow eyes lit by tiny spotlights, his voice hinting at the deepest depravity – and all in black and white... more» European social democracy can renew itself in its basic values and thought. Wish lists of painless demands have always been the curse of center-left parties... more» Incomes for top people in a wide variety of jobs that do not need a BA are higher than average incomes for many jobs that do require one. Maybe a reason to skip college... more» After a summer of blockbuster comic-book flicks and record ticket sales to women, why have we yet to see a superheroine movie?... more» Beleaguered liberals have instinctively re-created a united-front mentality suitable for crisis. Those who break ranks, like Sean Wilentz, are vilified... more» People vote Republican and liberal intellectuals are mystified. For their part, Republicans say that Democrats “just don’t get it.” What is this “it” they don’t get?... more» Thirty years ago, U.S. academics carried with them to England copies of David Lodge’s comic classic, Changing Places. But times have changed, writes Elaine Showalter... more» Tom Stoppard’s Rock ’n’ Roll portrays what is really an extended argument between Václav Havel and Milan Kundera about Czechoslovakia under communism... more» Anti-intellectualism, consumerism, iPods and TV, political correctness, postmodern relativism: are they making today’s college students the stupidest generation?... part 1 ... part 2 We need an inner environmental movement about our human psychological nature to match our concern with outer nature. Lionel Tiger explains... more» “Russians talk about globalization, of course. But behind this is an absolutely black and white picture: It’s ours. It’s theirs. Everybody is enemy or vassal”... more» Writing about poetry, particularly praising contemporary poetry, is a fine but extremely difficult art in itself. Ron Rosenbaum explains... more» Russia may seem strong, but it is getting weaker all the time, its population falling by a million a year. And the corruption. And the Muslim problem... more» Writers are genuinely what they are only when working in ghostly solitude – never when out chatting on the terrace. Cynthia Ozick explains... more» He was the “Henry Ford of Literature,” a “Voltaire from Kansas,” and “the Barnum of Books.” The greatest American publishing genius you never heard of... more» Women’s liberation, yes! Women across the globe need the liberty to be what they are: not, as radical feminism insists, liberation from what they are... more» Garrett Hardin’s famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” asserts that human beings are prisoners of biology and the market. He is wrong... more» Bullfighting is seen by many as cruel. But it is not merely a gaudy circus spectacle – at its best it is an art form. Well, maybe... more» Science it not quite at its end, says John Horgan. But the only way to find out how far it can go is to keep pushing against its limits... more» Vladimir Putin enters the picture, seeking to salvage Russia from the chaos and mass poverty of the Yeltsin era. Oil helped him out... more» Should British teachers accept student’s spelling misstakes merely as “variant spellings,” or does this denigrate Trooth in education?... more» “Faith depends upon belief in things that cannot be proved,” says P.J. O’Rourke, “and I can prove that more people flunk physics than flunk Sunday School”... more» We Americans can adjust our compass heading, says John Lewis Gaddis, if we can make ending tyranny once again our priority, as it was through most of our history... more» “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.” W.E.B. Du Bois’s words declaim in a way that echoes that most extraordinary of poets, John Milton... more» Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a seer of evil, a writer and witness who made clear that illusions about communism were not just stupid, but wicked... more» “I was a teenage atheist,” writes Julie Burchill, “and it brings me no shame to say that. But it certainly makes me smile”... more» The childhood many British parents give their kids is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. Even UNICEF agrees... more» The charm of old cookbooks is that while few would seriously cook from Fanny Farmer or Mrs. Beeton, each remains a time capsule of its era. Consider Vincent Price’s... more» Why are most Americans so willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded? What’s with this obsession with happiness?... more» Conductor Daniel Barenboim worries about the “moral responsibility of the ear.” Can a sense organ carry such a burden? We don’t ask our penises to possess a conscience... more» Charles Darwin showed that evolution not only made the human body what it is: it also shaped the human mind – how we think, feel, and create. Mark Czarnecki explains... more» Will Russia’s invasion of Georgia at last end the dreamy complacency that took hold of the world’s democracies after the Cold War? Robert Kagan wonders... more» |
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