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Articles of NoteThe Arts & Letters Daily Tote Bag – the perfect Mother’s Day gift for moms who love intelligent web surfing... Advert» “Every time you perform a magic trick, you are doing experimental psychology,” says Teller. If in the end the audience is baffled, the experiment worked... more» Green ethnic cleansing: to expel aboriginal persons from their homelands to create commodified “wilderness” is a charade... more» I.F. Stone, a man known for speaking truth to power, was not only a defender but an agent of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s purges, 1936–38... more» Icelanders have gone through hard times of late, which affects how they perceive themselves. But that is based too on how others perceive Icelanders... more» “Capitalism is nothing but a false religion, with Mammon as its god and Adam Smith as its high priest.” How true is this claim?... more» Post-Google, plagiarism is a different art: add little observations that differ from the original. Reorder paragraphs, with new quotes, spurious or ad hoc... more» “It would be naive to say that Iraq’s future is certain to be a peaceful one,” says Nir Rosen, “but the war between Sunnis and Shiites is now over”... more» In James Agee’s troubled journey from Tennessee to Harvard to New York to Alabama, he always asked too much from the world, and from himself... more» Jared Diamond is sued for $10 million by two New Guineans over a New Yorker piece on revenge culture in PNG – with plaintiffs helped by Stephen Jay Gould’s widow... more» ... more» J.G. Ballard, who expanded and defied the genre of science fiction, is dead at the age of 78... NYT ... James Fallows ... Peter Stothard ... New Yorker ... Spiked ... Telegraph ... Toby Litt ... Michael Moorcock ... Guardian ... Martin Amis ... Independent ... John Crace ... London Times ... more links ... His last short story. People and ideas influence events, but geography largely determines them. Time to dust off the Victorian thinkers who knew the physical world best... more» Lord Nelson’s mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton, once sang Haydn’s ode to Nelson’s victory – with Haydn himself at the piano... more» Break into spring in a comfy Arts & Letters Daily T-shirt – a fashion favorite of the Web intelligentsia... Advert» Hugo Chavez’s gift to President Obama at the summit was Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. The book is in fact a perfect idiot’s bible... more» His website looks like it always did, but in his personal life, Matt Drudge is behaving more and more like the reclusive Howard Hughes... more» You love Poe or you don’t, but, either way, Poe doesn’t love you. A writer who was more condescending to his adoring readers would be hard to find... more» Knowing East Germany would soon fade into memory, West German photo journalist Karlheinz Jardner set out for points east in 1990... more» ... photo gallery When Shakespeare died he left neither books nor letters nor notes. This strikes Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens as more than a little odd... more» Jill Price’s memory is extraordinary, to be sure, but it is not about just anything. It is about anything having to do with her... more» Autism has 111 recognized treatments. Familes will try many of these. None of them works, though all seem to – for a while... more» Jane Austen managed to tickle a sweet spot in the modern mind in a way that shows we are not so far removed from early Homo sapiens... more» Sir John Maddox, skeptical prophet who enlivened Nature, is dead at the age of 83... more» ... His predictions look pretty good ... Edge interview Just as Montaigne pioneered the modern essay form, Andrew Sullivan’s pithy, personal style is creating the modern blog... more» Both Picasso and Apollinaire were prime suspects when Leonardo’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911... more» Most overrated woman writer? Gertrude Stein, says Elaine Showalter: a sanctified “sister,” perhaps, but still unreadable. Most underrated?... more» They might turn out to be subhuman in intellectual and emotional powers. But if we clone Neanderthals, they will have legal rights... more» Humans evolved as distance runners who can overtake exhausted game. That’s why you have those stubby toes... more» From escape, to language, to history, to local lit: here are eight kinds of books Frank Bures won’t travel without... more» Music recitals, Glenn Gould predicted, would fade away, replaced by an individual interaction between listener and recorded artist. A good idea, he thought... more» Biblical characters are opaque to us, James Wood argues, precisely because they are transparent to God, who is their real audience. Perhaps... more» Russia’s Depopulation Bomb. Vodka is an important tool in what now amounts to a practice of ethnic self-cleansing... more» What was that world leader doing shaking hands with the cop who stands by the door at 10 Downing Street? At least Gordon Brown knows a cop’s place... more» John Hope Franklin: a model for scholars, students, and activists, a man of immense generosity to friends and of prudent counsel to the powerful... more» The little white lie that grew. Judge Marcus Einfeld got a speeding ticket, told a fib, and, as Clive James explains, dug himself in deeper... more» George Frideric Handel, musical genius, was also a binge eater and boozer whose gargantuan appetites brought on lead poisoning... more» Biofuels are the worst enemy of the world’s rainforests and of the people who depend on them. Heather Rogers explains... more» The most important clash in Israel’s brief history took place in 1948, when Israelis battled Arab militias in towns and villages of Palestine... more» “We’re constantly told that we can’t do anything: we’re poor, dirty, hungry, corrupt, diseased. And we’re supposed to build a better Africa?”... more» How odd: just handling cash can take the sting out of social rejection and even diminish physical pain. Money is such strange stuff... more» At midnight on March 6, 1835, a hysterical J.S. Mill knocked at Thomas Carlyle’s door: a servant had by mistake burned the ms. of Carlyle’s book... more» The snub of the century. It was T.S. Eliot himself who rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm for publication by Faber and Faber... more» Friedrich Engels was born into the coal fumes of the Ruhr, heart of the industrial revolution, where the rich lived next to human misery... more» Col. Percy Fawcett was convinced by research, deduction, and clairvoyance that an undiscovered city lay hidden in the Amazon. So he tried to find it... more» Science fiction used to be more overtly political. Now, says Benjamin Plotinsky, it tends increasingly to employ Christian allegory... more» Capitalism may not be finished, but it is set to become a servant of the people rather than a master. The current slump will accelerate this change... more» Afghanistan’s Ariana was once viewed by travel experts as among the finest airlines in the world. Mohammed Atash was the man to bring it back... more» What would it be like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. You would be wrong... more» If we continue to go on in the same way, our future is unsustainable. Of course, we never go on in the same way. Matt Ridley knows... more» A cloud of clichés and fallacies obscure Henry VIII. His grandeur and arrogance may render him attractive. But he was a serial killer... more» Marx was wrong. The opiate of the masses isn’t religion, but spectator sports, says David Barash. It’s in our genes.... more» Did Charles Dickens’s money-making tour of America kill him? No, but it added a new dimension to his immortality... more» Is it Shakespeare? Maybe, but not likely. The so-called Cobbe portrait is a splendid painting, but probably depicts Sir Thomas Overbury... more» American firms outsource work they used to do themselves. Why can’t American college students outsource their essays or dissertations?... more» Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the author. So where would he stand on the publication of his private journals – long after his own death?... more» Art Spiegelman loves chicken fat, was once banned from Robert Crumb’s house, and hates the term “graphic novel”... more» Setting goals can be useful, so long as you know what the right goals are. But as Drake Bennet points out, life is so damned complicated... more» Was Einstein wrong? Quantum effects not only go against deep intuitions about the world, they undermine special relativity... more» A tale of sadness and forgetting. It may be hard to believe, but Milan Kundera informed on one of his countrymen in 1950. The man got 14 years hard labor... more» China may sustain growth for another two decades and vindicate the optimists. But there are strong odds that China’s growth will fizzle... more» For all the wonders of our global era, Jews, Muslims, and Christians seem ever more locked in mortal combat. But maybe this story can have a happy ending... more» Blow the powder away and look at the evidence: Harvard MBA fingerprints are all over recent financial fiascos. Philip Broughton knows... more» The American Dream has not gone sour, says David Kamp: it can still give citizens a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wish... more» Shoes were important, but during WWII, Adidas also made the German version of the bazooka. The company was not alone in aiding the war effort... more» Newspapers have not really so much lost readers as lost the ability to monetize them. There is hope yet, as James DeLong explains... more» Just what the world needs least: wise and gifted child chefs who, with the help of their narcissistic moms and dads, will lead us to the culinary uplands... more» Have that drink, girls. It may well be that the “take-home message” from an Oxford survey on booze and cancer is that such studies can be intellectual garbage... more» Is religion innate? Would children raised in isolation spontaneously create their own religious beliefs? Paul Bloom says yes.... more» What are the most ancient words still in our vocabulary? Some of the words we use every day derive from a prehistoric tongue we might call “Ice Age”... more» Road novels, stories, and gangster films of the 1930s depicted American social mobility as a bitter cheat. We may now relive 1930s art... more» Sick of getting wound up playing Grand Theft Auto? Then try Flower, a video game where you can, uh, hang out with flowers, and stuff... more» Conrad Black has served a year of his six-year sentence. In an email interview, he describes his life in a Florida prison... more» “Natural selection” and “survival of the fittest.” Two phrases that have misled many about the true nature of evolution... more» Christopher Hitchens, on a visit to Beirut, could not resist scribbling a few words on a political poster. That’s when the trouble began... more» Nietzsche thought we took our deepest desires and disguised them as products of logic. Maybe experimental philosophy will show he was right... more» Percy Fawcett saw a majestic city rising in the Amazon, one swallowed at last by creepers and palms. They swallowed him too... more» Leonardo da Vinci, maybe a little like you, was a hopeless procrastinator. Well, so what? He was just on his way to his next great idea... more» Lalu Yadav, a corrupt and unapologetic yokel, is also eerily canny. He now heads the Indian Railway System, with its 2.4 million employees... more» Charles Dickens founded Urania Cottage for fallen women – mostly whores and thieves. He loved the stories they told him, which he wrote down... more» The thing about beautiful design is that you don’t need an expert to explain it. On the other hand, if you do have an expert, say, a mathematician, at hand... more» Cooking: forms of preparing food are humanity’s “killer app” – the evolutionary change that underpins all of the others... more» The bourgeoisie will eventually draw even the most barbarian nations into civilization, said Karl Marx. He knew the power of the middle class... more» Who is to blame for the world economic crisis? Does market capitalism have a future? Big questions – in Paris in 1938... more» Neither Britain nor America can boast a coherent, admirable, traditional cuisine. That is one reason both lands produce such great cookbooks... more» Knowing the odds, basketball star Shane Battier can pursue an uncertain strategy with total certainty – the very picture of cool objectivity... more» A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The United States has seldom wasted its crises. Maybe we can also make good use of the current one... more» “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” A rather carnivorous metaphor for the vegetarian Henry David Thoreau... more» At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a keyboard tap away. It’s so cool never to be alone. And yet... more» Historic experiments suggest that there may be a better way to gear up the human immune system to battle cancer: come down with a fever... more» Country boy, wise leader, skeptical theist, second-rate political huckster, or even racist. Each generation has a Lincoln of its own... more» The cognitive capacities that have made us so successful as a species also work together to create a human tendency for religious thinking... more» Think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a politicized financial disaster? Just wait until pension funds implode. Jon Entine explains... more» Is evolution taking the species of the world toward greater improvement? S.J. Gould claimed not, but his view now has its critics... more» Frankenfoods may be better for you, and for the planet, than you think, argues James McWilliams. They do not derserve all the bad press... more» “This din of brasses, tin pans and kettles, this Chinese clatter with wood sticks and ear-cutting scalping knives...” Critics did not always like Wagner... more» Britain cannot forever bury all its waste, nor is it able to recycle what it cannot bury. Why not just burn it?... more» Military analysts are writing off high-tech warfare in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq. But you just wait... more» Would a world without vultures be a nicer place? Don’t even think about it. Constance Casey explains... more» If democracy is in trouble across the globe, blame it on China, an authoritarian power with the economic clout to back those dictators that please it... more» Except for the miracles of Sherman’s and Grant’s decisive victories in the field, Lincoln would have been defeated in 1864. How different things would look... more» Like it or not, maybe as much as 40% of your political attitudes are determined by your genes. James Q. Wilson explains... more» John Updike, novelist, man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce, and life’s adventures, is dead... AP ... NYT ... Telegraph ... Guardian ... NYT ... London Times ... WP ... New Yorker ... LA Times ... Guardian ... TPM ... Boston Globe ... London Times ... National Post ... WSJ ... LA Times ... Guardian ... Forbes ... SF Chron ... Slate ... Guardian ... Philly Inq ... TLS ... Independent ... Weekly Standard ... New Republic ... Guardian ... Michael Dirda ... Morris Dickstein What does a woman want? Does she know? Does science know? Is this a deeply unanswerable question?... more» The entire panoply of problems that John Maynard Keynes faced in the 1930s has come back to us. We still need him... more» From Nebraska to Nepal, people praise their deities, attend services, perform holy rites, study sacred texts. Does it really make them better off?... more» The rise of consumer society in Britain in the 17th century went along with a desire to attain markers of wealth, status, and good taste... more» President Obama’s brave inaugural speech rejected the political philosophy of the previous administration more than any other in history... more» Robbie Burns, a poet who refused to blame all his country’s woes on the English, is still the voice of Scotland... more» Ill-fitting gowns, lavender candles, and whale songs. No wonder men struggle with the spa experience... more» No more scribbles. What we need is a “slow writing” movement that extols the virtues of neat, expressive penmanship... more» Edgar Allan Poe was also a player of hoaxes, a plagiarist, and substance abuser. But oh, how he could write... more» From gorilla walking sticks to crows who like bug fishing, there are plenty of clever non-humans who use tools... more» Anti-Israel sentiment is morphing into anti-Jewish sentiment, as more and more people project their disdain for the modern world on to “the Jew”... more» The death of the newspaper. Then come to think of it, newspapers have been dying for ever so long a time. Jill Lepore explains... more» Call it the violence network. It’s biased, gruesome, and totally compelling. Al-Jazeera can make you think differently about war... more» ...so help me God.” What does the history of presidential inaugural addresses tell us about the American story?... more» John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, is dead at the age of 85... LAT ... Guardian ... Independent ... Melvyn Bragg ... NYT ... Express ... Times ... IHT ... Guardian ... Times ... Guardian ... Telegraph ... Times Andrew Wyeth, austere American artist with a hold on the popular imagination, is dead at 91... WSJ ... Wash Post ... NYT ... Boston Globe ... Baltimore Sun ... LAT ... NYT ... SF Chron ... Time ... London Times ... NYMag ... American Spectator On Iraqi battlefields, robots are killing the bad guys and saving U.S. lives. But today’s PackBots and Ravens are still primitive machines. Just wait... more» The 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» |
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New BooksBorn today, the James family would have been a typical Prozac-loving, depressed, bipolar, narcissistic, fame-seeking bunch. Or maybe not... more» Nostalgia can mean a melancholic flight from life. With Constantine Cavafy it turns into an element of cultural health and creative drive... more» Truth matters, but the best way to get at truth is to allow an open contest of ideas. That’s why we need freedom of speech... more» The animated Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his Armenian caftan. The portly, amiable David Hume. They must have made a very odd couple... more» Chiang Kai-Shek was despised, not just by the Communist Chinese, but by many Americans. Yet he may not deserve his reputation as a brutal despot... more» Why don’t students like school? Because school requires them to think abstractly – not something our brains are designed to enjoy... more»
Garish, tasteless, sentimental: kitsch gives us fake human feeling wrapped in a thick layer of cuteness. But so what, if people enjoy it?... more» Friedrich Engels was a scion of 19th-century Manchester cottonocracy, yet hoped for the British economy’s collapse... more» Seedy, desperate men and women: traitors, unhappy adulterous lovers, murderers. No one has ever wanted to be a Graham Greene character... more» Franz Kafka lived out his humdrum life in Prague. As he said, “Prague doesn’t let go. The old crone has claws. One has to yield”... more» The boxing, the Burgundy, the ease in talking to privates and generals alike, the friendships with Camus or cigar-store bookies: A.J. Liebling was a wordly man... more» Universities in trouble. The collapse last year of institutional investments has been spectacular, with higher education hit hard... more» Liberalism has always rightly stood for a broad prosperity and solidarity that pits itself against exploitation. It has always, that is, been proto-socialist... more» Helen Gurley Brown was a poor hillbilly from the Ozarks whose father died when she was ten and whose sister had polio. But from that start... more» Art entertains, inspires, and goads. But it also deepens our grasp of the human condition by taking us into the minds of others... more» ... more» ... more» However loudly the grammar mavens may protest, says Ben Yagoda, an English speaker can expect to see new words impact their language... more» Even D.A. Powell’s flawed poems are better than hundreds of unflawed poems that live for a day like mayflies, then die on the page from dullness... more» What distinguishes friendship between two people from friendship between a human and an animal? Is “friendship” even the right word with animals?... more» “Rich, artistic, brilliant, oversexed (or undersexed), neurotic, and ultimately tragic.” Yeah, it’s that brooding Wittgenstein family again... more» Black is brilliant, and Alain Locke, one of the great intellectuals of any color, a man of aesthetic sensibility and philosophical depth, proved it... more» Refrigeration changed our attitude toward food by removing the site of production from the sight of consumers. Thus did our idea of “freshness” emerge... more» “We’ve burned our bridges,” Goebbels said in 1943. “We will either go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or the greatest criminals”... more» In 1797, Thomas Cadell made perhaps the greatest mistake in publishing history. One Rev. George Austen had sent him a novel by his daughter... more» It was the young Benjamin Disraeli who coined the word millionaire in 1827 for the burgeoning class that had created the Industrial Revolution... more» The historical battle for women is to be visible, to be accorded full humanity, not as transient organisms, nor as animals created for male use... more» As we drift toward a world where the press is made up of small players, don’t forget: we may come to miss the media dinosaurs who once roamed the earth... more» Radical Islam does not revert to an ancient world-view. Would that it did. The Islam of Khomeini or Al-Qaeda is in truth quite modern... more» Marie Antoinette dancing, Napoleon making small talk, trading with the Iroquois – Lucie Dillon’s journal has it all... more» “A review cannot convey how deeply unpleasant the experience of reading The Kindly Ones is. This is one of the most repugnant books I have ever read”... more» Is the snarky Maureen Dowd a witty political satirist, or a sexist political scientist? Not a hard question, except maybe to David Denby... more» Did Gerard Manley Hopkins’s being a priest damage his capacity to be a poet? Was he gay? Biographers need to ask, if not answer, such questions... more» “Whoever beats a good woman, and then abandons her, should be in great trouble – or worse!” The Song of the Cid still has appeal... more» Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 was a symbol of great art, resolute courage, and human dignity... more» India is a place, Wendy Doniger writes, “where not only the future but even the past is unpredictable.” Just look at the history of Hinduism... more» Hitler loved high society: he wanted to be seen with bluebloods and celebrities of film, music, art, theatre, and sports... more» The Oedipuses were a talented but, well, you know, not exactly happy family. Maybe a little bit like that Wittgenstein clan... more» Top economists, ordinary people, and even Ben Bernanke were wrong to ignore the housing bubble. But were they being irrational?... more» Nature vs. nurture? Forget it. Nature works with nurture, and nurture with nature, to shape our aptitudes, our health, our very lives... more» Rummaging through some trash, he fished out a bowler hat, a cane, overlarge boots and pants, and a tiny jacket. Charlie Chaplin was born... more» The experience of beauty ought to tell us we are at home in the world, argues Roger Scruton, that it is a place fit for the lives of beings like us... more» The words of godlike Agamemnon need clear, direct translation into English. Yet would he say, “I’ll be okay”?... more» Kamila Stosslova, though not caring much for Leos Janácek’s music, turns out to have been his ideal muse: an empty canvas for his fantasies... more» One way to see French history: a long 19th century bookended by slaughter. But what a 19th century it was... more» Ought a judge to allow two years to pass before dismissing a $54 million damage claim for a missing pair of trousers? Some people think, no... more» It is easy to forget how close we remain to the prehistoric men and women who first found beauty in the world. Our art instinct is theirs... more» Lafcadio Hearn had a rare gift for bringing a place to bustling, scented, gorgeously tinted life: a thunderstorm over New Orleans, for instance... more» By the age of 34, Talleyrand had become a worldly, womanizing bishop. With the end of the ancien régime, he adjusted to new realities. And how... more» Behind the carefully constructed persona of suburban squire, John Cheever waged a tumultuous battle against himself... more» While friends lived it up, young Warren Buffett scoured stock listings for “cigar butts,” discarded stocks that still had a few puffs left in them... more» Experimental science can involve nudging complicated equipment. Still, the most temperamental piece of lab equipment will always be the human brain... more» After midnight on 18 March 1990, two men posing as police entered the Gardner Museum in Boston. It was a heist... more» The Revolution of 1848 actually made politics less flexible, consolidating state power. Continuity, it showed, works better than revolution... more» Stalin would kill not just you for the wrong thoughts: he would kill your family, down to the last child. Not even the Czar at his worst did that... more» William Julius Wilson on race: neither blaming the victim nor defending the victim is going to move us forward... more» Paul Valéry: the most distinguished, versatile, and best-connected mind of his time, the ultimate French intellectual... more» C. Wright Mills decried the “cheerful robots” he saw in cold war culture, along with an American fusion of welfare and warfare... more» Ellen Terry “moved through the world of the theatre like embodied sunshine.” Henry Irving was electrifying on stage... more» Abraham Lincoln has been long enshrined as a complex legend, a fate sealed by the martyrdom that gave him to the ages, or the angels... more» With the death in 1944 of his first wife, Bella, whose love fostered Marc Chagall’s creativity, he became another one of art’s egotistical monsters... more» Godot and Molloy lit up the landscape of post-war writing. Now Samuel Beckett’s letters are set to light up our era... more» Between 1905 and 1915 revolutions led by intellectuals rocked the world. They also failed to create democracies... more» Every generation is given the annotated Dracula it deserves. Ours is a postmodern version, one with a playful disdain for any claim of truth... more» Did Werner Heisenberg really want to build a bomb for Hitler, or did he secretly, intentionally sabotage the effort?... more» We, like London’s Bright Young People in 1930, now find ourselves on a dividing line between a time of gross excess and what may be a grim future... more» Beauty is both pleasurable and an ethical summons, requiring us to renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world... more» Workaholic professionals, whose minds 24/7 race ahead to the next encounter, are always elsewhere – the twitterati... more» Ben Franklin, Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI, Talleyrand, Hamilton, Napoleon, Madame de Staël, Washington, Mohawk Indians. Lucie de La Tour du Pin knew them all... more» Soybeans yield more usable protein per acre than other common cultivated plant. Yes, but that is then used to make protein of a different kind... more» In his stories, John Cheever tried to make sense of the world and of other people. In his novels, he mostly tried to make sense of himself... more» Victor Serge had helped bring the Soviet Union to power. He then became a moral and intellectual lighthouse to its fiercest opponents... more» Rousseau was a genius, but also a selfish, half mad, paranoid egomaniac. The lovable David Hume, on the other hand... more» Zbigniew Herbert’s voracious appetite for experience of the world – landscape, food, art, people – made him an ideal traveler, and travel writer... more» Just as we have the same bones in our hands as chimps, so we share a deep desire to kill members of our own species. Hey, are those bones the same?... more» Why is it that novels about men in boats (Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn) are treated as important, while ones about women in houses (House of Mirth) are not?... more» George Orwell saw the problem for a fixed human nature as “how to prevent power from being abused.” Till we solve that one, he’ll remain a living writer... more» Atheists and agnostics abound today, but it was not always thus: time was when all lives were oriented on God and religion... more» The global warming bandwagon is stuck in a snowdrift, and there are signs the public is suffering from “green fatigue”... more» We may well be genetically predisposed to appreciate listening to Sinatra or staring at a Seurat. But where did the genes come from?... more» “A parent’s role is to set the limits so that the child does not overindulge its animal spirits.” Maybe that’s how governments should treat citizens... more» Salvador Dalí seemed a mad genius and cheerful fraud. The real Dalí was pitiable, a prisoner of his greed and pathologies... more» Ancient Greek joke. Man complains to his doctor, “When I wake up in the morning, I’m dizzy for 20 minutes” Doctor advises, “Then wake up 20 minutes later”... more» “I’ll scarcely be persuaded that anything good can come from Arabia,” said Petrarch. Little did he grasp the depth of Islamic thought... more» ... more» Alan Wolfe’s claim is that liberalism is a set of dispositions, habits of mind: liberals are talkative, tolerant, open-minded, egalitarian, and realistic... more» Everyone seems to agree that human evolution stopped around 10,000 years ago. How sure are we that this is true?... more» ... interview Alas, poor Kafka. In the eighty-odd years since his death, the deification of Franz Kafka has reduced his work to the level of aphorism... more» Masterly, pitiless, I.J. Singer’s great 1936 novel, The Brothers Ashkenazi, forgoes a happy ending for a just one: Lodz gets all it deserves... more» “Adventure is a soft option. It requires less courage to be an explorer than an accountant.” Maybe, but exploration makes for better reading... more» Good Americans don’t seriously question English aesthetic judgments, said H.L. Mencken. Film critic David Thomson has long dined out on that maxim... more» “Darwin and Lincoln did not make the modern world,” says Adam Gopnik. “But they helped make our moral modernity”... more» ... more» “Success naturally confirms us in a favorable opinion of our own abilities,” wrote Samuel Johnson. Jane Austen had read Johnson on conceit... more» Long live philosophers! As any good analyst would point out, that’s not just a spirited apostrophe. It’s a fact... more» Newspapers have to deliver the news. If they do it with style and energy, William Randolph Hearst knew, and readers will follow... more» “Sashenka experienced the despair of the damned. The unthinkable had happened.” Interrogated in Stalin’s terror, she broke... more» God, John Milton said, “hath yet ever had this island under the special indulgent eye of his providence.” He has the same extravagant view of himself... more» Not for historian Barry Cunliffe are “the events and personalities flitting on the surface” of history. He looks for the forces that lie beneath... more» Plato called it “the greatest incentive to evil,” and maybe he was right. Yet we all succumb to pleasure: booze, chocolate, sex – or just a warm bath... more» A perfect forgery may give us the same visual pleasure as an original, but we still feel cheated: it lacks the originality of mind we expect fom art... more» He championed green issues, sex reform, and animal rights in Victoria’s reign. Why don’t we know who Edward Carpenter is?... more» Since the welfare state in Britain takes care of so much in personal life, there’s not much choice left to people outside of sex and shopping... more» The tragedy of Lincoln and Darwin: vast death was the necessary agent both of natural selection and of ending slavery... more» Malcolm Gladwell’s nifty little stories may seem on the face of it to explain his general rules. Often they do not... more» Darwin’s work on the common ancestry came not from mere curiosity, but from a desire to show that African slaves had the same roots as their masters... more» “To draw its picture is like a blind man touching a snowflake,” said Paul Dirac of his own work. “One touch and it’s gone”... more» It was brutal, heroic, and a victory for the longbow. How did the Battle of Agincourt look through the eyes of an archer?... more» If a single Soviet soldier had fired into the unarmed crowds in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1991, the USSR would have collapsed. But not firing also meant... more» Every young generation adopts and adapts Romeo and Juliet as its own image of romantic revolt against intolerance... more» Homo sapiens is a species obsessed with creating artistic experiences with which to amuse, shock, titillate, and enrapture itself... more» Leafing through The Complete Playboy Centerfolds, you will be sure to note the anatomical variety among bunnies. Their nipples, for one thing... more» Reuel Wilson’s childhood was lived between a Scylla of a father on one side and a Charybdis of a mother on the other... more» Women do not want careers, says Megan Basham. They deeply, really, truly want to stay home and raise the kids... more» Facts do not solve problems, Robert Hutchins thought. In truth, facts are “the core of an anti-intellectual curriculum”... more» Obsession can be genuinely agonizing and disruptive. It can also be highly valued in an artist, a lover, or a doctor... more» The mailman will one day do his rounds whistling atonal non-melodies, Anton Webern predicted. Why does this seem so implausible?... more» No rational justification can be offered for trust and self-sacrifice. But without them, social life is chaos, a war of all against all... more» Marc Chagall steadily revised and at times even reinvented his themes as he was exposed to works by old masters in the Louvre and elsewhere... more» Underneath George Plimpton’s deeply amiable exterior was someone who could come across as a Man Without Qualities... more» | |
Essays and OpinionIf beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the earth wobbles under the weight of six billion beholders, what is beauty then? Ihab Hassan wonders... more» Underdogs. When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter’s basketball team, he chose to speak to the girls calmly, to convince them with reason and common sense... more» The American Musicological Society denounces the use of music in torture. So high-minded to worry about Guantánamo inmates. How about the tortured plight of younger musicologists?... more» Fifty years ago this month, physicist and author C.P. Snow addressed “The Two Cultures,” the gulf between literary intellectuals and natural scientists... more» Exclamation marks used to be frowned on. But now we use them all the time! Hurrah!!! What is it about email that makes people so excited?... more» “What year was Pearl Harbor bombed?” Such direct questions are byproducts of literacy and do not sit easily in any oral culture, says John McWhorter. Consider inner-city America... more» The traditional obituary is an art form nasty, brutish, and short, one that takes the scrambled up thing that is a human life and smashes it into a tidy narrative... more» Heirs to Fortuyn. Muslim immigration and sclerotic welfare states are by degrees pushing Europe to the political right. Bruce Bawer explains... more» No matter how much you think you’re ready for parental mortality, says Christopher Buckley, when the moment comes, “it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed”... more» A.N. Wilson has been a believer, then an atheist, and has come out the other side as a believer once again. He explains his personal pilgrimage... more» Mark Edmundson wants his fellow literature profs to give up “readings” of works of literary art. Ignore Marx’s, Freud’s, Foucault’s, or Derrida’s points of view: just read the books... more» George Bernard Shaw said a “hideous fatalism” lay at the heart of Darwinism, “a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence.” Oh, really? Brian Boyd on Darwin and purpose... more» The Rosetta Stone is a wondrous object, but who should own it? The Macedonians? The Egyptians? The French, who deciphered it? The Greeks? The British, who have taken good care of it?... more» Ian McEwan’s Atonement alienates readers who dislike what they regard as a trick at the end. Maybe they feel guilt at having been so moved by the novel’s conventional romantic power... more» We can talk up wind and solar power all we want. But billions of people in China and India will never trade 3¢/kwh coal for 15¢ wind or 30¢ solar. Time to get real, says Peter Huber... more» “Workers of the world, unite!” Karl Marx said that workers had “first of all to settle things with their own bourgeoisie.” Now may be the moment, argues Leo Panitch... more» The Special Interest State feeds on itself; the larger and more complex government becomes, the higher the costs of monitoring it. No one without a strong interest can even keep track... more» As much as Anthony Grayling admires the art, music, and literature of the West, it is the world-transforming insight and power of science that is the great achievement of humanity... more» As you read this, would-be genocidaires are out there, thinking about it: whom to kill; how many; how to do it. Also: whether they can get away with it. Will you let them?... more» Natural habitats – trees, water, wildlife – give us a sense of deep pleasure, says Paul Bloom. At the same time, we feel anxiety about the possibility of nature’s loss... more» Western postmodernism has roots in the failure of revolutionary politics, says Terry Eagleton. Islamism is a response to the defeat of the Muslim Left, with religion replacing politics... more» “Liberty is a form of order,” writes Roger Scruton, “not a license for anarchy and self-indulgence. We should cease to mock the things that mattered to our parents”... more» Much recent British fiction falls into the shrill, misogynous, snobbish “Thatcher’s Britain” genre. But what did Britain look like to novelists before Thatcher took office?... more» Realism is central to storytelling today, many critics will claim. Yet it wasn’t always so in the past, argues Ted Gioia, and it may not remain so for long... more» Virtually all warnings can be viewed as premature, since the date of a warned-against event may be uncertain. Consider warnings against the housing bubble... more» How to handle class: whoever you meet, your dress and your bearing must convey the message, “I am freer and less terrified than you are”... more» Was David Hume an atheist? An agnostic? Both categories of nonbelief are too crude for such a subtle, witty ironist. Simon Blackburn shows why... more» The Elements of Style: for fifty years we’ve been fed this toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity that is not even grounded by a proper grasp of grammar... more» As a candle-carrying altar boy, Brendan O’Neill had enough religion forced down his throat. But the memories don’t make atheist preachiness any more bearable... more» Notorious for its violence, misogyny, and gleeful amorality, though less well known for its biting social commentary: Grand Theft Auto IV polarizes opinion... more» Our genes are not just selfish. We also care about loyalty, respect, tradition, and religion. Our evolved moral emotions are about our families, our friends, and our groups... more» Postmodernism was beyond good and evil just as the financial bubble was beyond value fact and value fantasy. “It’s true because we say it is” has run its course, writes André Glucksmann... more» Economists should abandon the idea that they can confidently predict without causing people to believe their predictions. They need to replace their false modesty with true moderation... more» Europe may think it has retired from its historical tasks, having done and suffered so much. But history will not let Europe off the hook quite so easily, writes Adam Kirsch... more» Whatever his actual theology, John Rawls’s life and writings, indeed his whole theory of justice, are infused with feelings that reflect a deeply religious temperament... more» Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is a force that creates a spontaneous order which, without asking for much, solves the enormous task of social coordination... more» Why, my friend asked, was I so quiet? I said my kid was in the hospital. Leukemia? I wanted to tell her I would hack off my right arm for it to be as simple as cancer... more» “Energizer Bunny Arrested! Charged with Battery.” Why do we hate puns – and love them, too? Joseph Tartakovsky on the mystery of the pun... more» Global warming, says Freeman Dyson, “has become a party line,” promoted by experts crippled by a conventional wisdom they have created for themselves... more» “The river rises, flows over its banks / and carries us all away, as mayflies floating downstream.” Gilgamesh, like many later thinkers, learned something about nothing... more» Narcissistic tendencies – confidence, extraversion, a desire for power – can actually help to make you a good leader. But if you’re a true narcissist... more» Adverbs like surprisingly, predictably, and ironically tell the reader what to value in a sentence before he has read it. Even William Zinsser had to learn to avoid them... more» We worry around here: are they about to declare Arts & Letters Daily addicts mentally ill? That’s what experts want to do with Internet addicts... more» Setting achievements of Mesopotamia and Greece side by side is a useful exercise, says Roger Sandall. What do we learn from the comparison?... more» The economic downturn is a profound threat to the autocratic regimes of the world, from China and Russia to Venezuela and the Persian Gulf states... more» When the time came, Alexander Hamilton put on his glasses and fired above Burr’s head, shooting some twigs off a cedar tree. Burr aimed to kill... more» Let’s face it, Twitter marks an advance in freedom and any backlash against it is doomed. For the fault lies not in our Tweets but in ourselves... more» “I never thought,” says Roger Scruton, “when I finally put the old humanism behind me, that I would ever feel nostalgia over its loss.” But just look at the New Humanism... more» Everyone else is getting a bailout. Why not the publishing industry? Democracies need books as much as they need banks and cars... more» The killer’s blood was on the weapon, but a DNA search yielded nothing. Why not comb through DNA records to find the killer’s relatives? Just might crack the case... more» “Most people who bother with the matter at all,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “would admit that the English language is in a bad way.” Was it, back then? Is it so bad today?... more» The beauty, intelligence, grace, complexity, and wit that make Lolita a work of art deepen our well of compassion and sympathy, says Francine Prose, whether we like it or not... more» The American project: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious... more» “Like Pascal, like Kierkegaard and Tolstoy, indeed like Nietzsche....” Who are you reading? Must be George Steiner. If you don’t care much for high culture, Steiner will care on your behalf... more» Terry Southern, author of Dr. Strangelove, was a satirist, to be sure. Also journalist, novelist, playwright, and producer of precocious, unclassifiable mélanges of fact and fiction... more» Not so long ago conservatives were equating liberalism with fascism; today, they have done a 180-degree turn: liberalism is now synonymous with socialism... more» It is given to very few writers of fiction to create an imperishable character. Let us give thanks then to John Mortimer for Horace Rumpole, old rogue and old hero of the Old Bailey... more» A nation of jailers. The American project of civic inclusion remains incomplete, says Glenn Loury, as long as so many blacks remain in prison... more» We don’t need a “new capitalism.” We need to go back to a truer, deeper understanding of Adam Smith, A.C. Pigou, and other thinkers, says Amartya Sen... more» Woolf, Rhys, and O’Connor sounds like a law firm, and indeed it could be – a firm sure to lay down clear laws and illuminating precedents for women writers... more» Down with Facebook: not just because of the fake “friends,” but because of the stultifying mind-numbing inanity of it all, the sheer boredom... more» The Philadelphia Flower Show’s explosive displays of color and petals and odors are excessive, but they are also a rather timely kind of excess... more» In our universities we ought to keep on studying philosophy, music, and art. But how about a nod toward the fact that 27,000 children die every day from preventable causes?... more» Are men really funnier than women? Here are one or two theories of men’s vs. women’s humor. Or is it three, or seven, theories?... more» Most of what scholars need for research these days is on the Internet. Oh yeah? So you’re trying to trace a judicial duel held before the French King in 1386... more» His prose never lingers over needless complexities. No, Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t try our patience with life’s mysteries. All can be explained and improved. He makes you feel so darned good... more» History is larger than science, since science is part of history, says John Lukacs. First came nature, then came man, then science. No scientists, no science... more» Ian McEwan once tried to give away novels in a park. Only women took them, not men. He predicts, “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead”... more» Artificial intelligence may one day replicate the human brain and its awareness. But will it do so with digital, on/off switches? That is a very hard question... more» Niceness is a political sentiment that has undermined discipline and authority in family and classroom. Kenneth Minogue explains how... more» Poetry today is – all of it – magnificent. It may be that, come the next Ice Age, it will go back to being satisfactory. That might be a good thing, too... more» Baby Boomers had it all: the jobs, the safe money, luxurious retirement at 55. Watching it fall apart can be amusing for their children... more» Rush Limbaugh and his fellow bloviators for radio and TV may survive in the age of Obama. But if conservatism is to have a future, it will need better than a looped tape of lowbrow talk... more» India’s euphoria at the Oscars reveals a lot about its national character. Too much, in fact. Indians now know, our slum dwellers are the world’s best... more» Submission in advance. Twenty years after the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Islamism has Europe more firmly in its grip than ever before... more» Deep in one writer’s soul, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are having their bourbons and hammering away at their typewriters. The bourbon is important... more» Britain, bastion of freedom, is the first EU country to bar an elected European legislator from its territory for his political opinions... more» Intellectuals flatter themselves by pitting their virtues against public philistinism. Better, argues Andrew Delbanco, that they should ask how they might earn back public trust... more» Should scientists study possible links between race and IQ? Neuroscientist Stephen Rose says No. Psychologists Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams say Yes. Comments here and here. Art has always needed patrons, as Jonathan Le Cocq explains. But taxpayer patronage means the arts are no longer being paid for by their direct audience... more» John Updike, driven by intellectual curiosity all his life, was troubled by science as others are troubled by God. Ian McEwan explains... more» We need to know the astounding truth about biological evolution, says Richard Dawkins, and the equally amazing intellectual dishonesty of its enemies... more» McCulture. Americans have an admirable liking for the books, music, and foods that process other cultures. But is this a taste for the truly foreign?... more» Lit crit is off the menu, but the reading public till wants thoughtful ideas about narratives in any medium – plots, characters, moral issues. Look at books on television... more» Citizenship in a free state can never alone be enough for us. We need a larger sense of purpose, of meaning, of resources for the human spirit... more» Charles Darwin had the objectivity to put aside ideas with powerful emotional resonance, like the notion that evolution should be purposeful. He could think for himself... more» The relationship between movies and comics, though it may never be a marriage, will always be alive, mysterious and passionate as a romance... more» It’s a curious reversal in moralizing. Food was once a matter of personal taste. Now sex is a matter of taste, and food puts people in high moral dudgeon... more» No one competing for national office can afford to be on the wrong side of Americanism, a creed both immensely attractive and remarkably supple... more» Carl Orff may have despised the Nazis for their lack of aesthetic sensibility, but he kept his views to himself and did well in the Third Reich... more» “Culture – literature and the other arts – are functionally significant features of human evolution.” Joseph Carroll and other thinkers on the power of Darwin’s thought today... more» In the last years, the financial system created a fog so thick that even its captains could not navigate it. Like the rest of us, they fell for a kind of pseudo-objectivity... more» Samuel Huntington died a pariah among America’s intellectual elite. As Eric Kaufmann explains, this was because he was actually rather normal... more» A nation divided. You see, the yoga people simply can’t stand what lawn-chemical people represent, and vice versa... more» Organ donation, some argue, should be built on altruism, pure kindness to complete strangers. Lovely ideal, but what if it means people die for want of transplant organs?... more» Should you take the GRE as a way to ensure your future? What if you flub it? What if you don’t, but people think you’re just showing off? Michael Bérubé wonders... more» In the age of Barack Obama, a silent but fateful struggle for the soul of capitalism is being waged. Can the market system be made to serve us? Or will we serve it?... more» Parents ought to have the right to name their own kids, most of us would agree. But what if they want to call their baby boy “Adolf Hitler”?... more» The Ultimatum Game: what an eye-opener for economists. You never know what you’re going to get until you actually run the experiment... more» Religion and science do not conflict, says the National Academy of Sciences. But this lovely idea is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith... more» Che Guevara, steely and determined in his beret, is so cool. In fact, in Cuba he’s become the Ronald McDonald of the revolution... more» Being smart does not entail being able to make the right decisions. Rational behavior, getting on in life, can be beyond those even with the highest IQs... more» Bankers out of work might consider becoming chefs. But no Madoff types, please: cooking the books isn’t the right experience for cooking coq au vin... more» Even before the inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander was writing poetry that was already public in the worst sense: inauthentic, bureaucratic, rhetorical... more» As we all seek more connectivity, we lose our sense of a private self. We no longer hear the still, small voice that speaks only in silence... more» Google has been digitizing millions of books from major research libraries. What does this mean for the future of the book? Robert Darnton wonders... more» Graffiti artists in the Paris Metro rage at remote abstractions: corporations or governments. As for the palpable threat right there on the platform... more» He smashed the china, soiled sheets, sunbathed nude, and was either drunk or stoned. Arthur Rimbaud was an impossible house guest... more» Blogging emphasizes self-obsessed, angry point scoring over the reflective exchange of ideas. The Web needs a politics that is not all about “me”... more» Two decades after the fatwa on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, Muslim fanatics have gained a new advantage: media self-censorship... more» Explorer Richard Burton found the Somalis a “fierce and turbulent race” in 1854. They still are. They are also eloquent poets... more» Puritans love disasters: they can emerge from their priest holes, wagging their fingers: “You are being punished for your immoral lifestyle”... more» For eight years, George W. Bush pulled the levers of government – sometimes frantically – never realizing they did not connect to the machinery... 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» Literacy, 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» 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» |
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