New Criterion articles from February 2002

New Criterion archives from February 2002

Notes & comments: February 2002.
February 1, 2002... Harvard's black comedy Of the many things to be observed about the controversy that has lately erupted at Harvard University over the so-called stars of its Black Studies department, the first is that it has been a welcome and indeed...

George Santayana.(new edition of Santayana's works)
February 1, 2002... Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is...

Guerrillophilia & the sincerely frivolous.(Italian rebel Giangiacomo Feltrinelli)
February 1, 2002... Not long ago in Paris, I went to see a laudatory full-length documentary film about General Massoud, the former commander of the Afghan Northern Alliance. The commercial chances of the film had been much improved by the assassination of Massoud...

Separating the flowers.(Poem)
February 1, 2002... Separating the flowers I rinsed the stems and lifted the dead blossoms from those still palpable with color and scent, then set the vase down again like a scale whose one side, unburdened, rises. ...

France.(Poem)
February 1, 2002... France Surrealist of hedgerows, Baudelaire Of weeds blown low within a hunter's brake, Kite of sorrow in a small boy's frown, And truffle scent beneath a winter lake, How can I solve you? How can I begin To...

Black Skimmers on the Gulf Coast.(Poem)
February 1, 2002... Black Skimmers on the Gulf Coast Rynchops niger The afternoon increases as it wanes And Skimmers, which are named for what they do, Fly low above the water where they strain A living morsel they don't need to chew. ...

Paris in winter: thank heaven for Morandi. (Art).
February 1, 2002... Going to exhibitions this winter in Paris was not for the fainthearted. It required a willingness to endure the overblown, the repetitive, and, at times, the downright disgusting, although fortunately there were occasional alternatives to the...

"Inheriting Cubism: The Impact of Cubism on American Art, 1909-1936". (Exhibition notes).(Hollis Taggert Galleries, New York, New York)
February 1, 2002... "Inheriting Cubism: The Impact of Cubism on American Art, 1909-1936," at Hollis Taggert Galleries, New York. November 28, 2001-January 12, 2002 The widespread ignorance of early American modernism is not at all surprising, what with the...

"Conversations with Traditions". (Exhibition notes).(miniature paintings, Asia Society, New York, New York)
February 1, 2002... Shahzia Sikander in II "Conversations with Traditions" at Asia Society, New York. November 17, 2001-February 17, 2002 Virtually every "advanced" artist today-those who regularly turn up in biennials and mid-career retrospectives--works in a...

Opera in New York.(one-act operas, Manhattan School, New York, New York)
February 1, 2002... Along with the numerous professional and semi-professional performances of opera in the New York area, the schools of music often present works that are interesting for their rarity. Such was the case at the Manhattan School on December 5, with...

The charges & countercharges of self-righteous prigs. (The media).(Bernard Goldberg's attack on CBS Evening News, counterattacked by Tom Shales)
February 1, 2002... The lead of The New York Times's story about financial troubles at The Irish Times pays tribute to that paper as a "guide" to Hibernians doubtless bewildered by "the economic and cultural booms of the last decade." Brian Lavery, the article's...

Orpheus with arsenic. (Books).
February 1, 2002... Francois Villon (1431-1463?) is the quintessential Orphean poet, forever glancing back over his shoulder at what he is about to lose. Friends and enemies, lovers, his mother, his many persecutors (real and imagined), his colleagues in roguery,...

Iris Murdoch: A Life. (Books: be brave).
February 1, 2002... Peter Conradi Iris Murdoch: A Life. W. W. Norton, 706 pages, $35 Iris Murdoch (1919-99) was--unlike most modern writers--intelligent, nice, and good. Her physical beauty seemed to reflect the inward beauty of her soul. In person, she was...

Mathematical Mountaintops. (Books: spheres & cubes).
February 1, 2002... John L. Casti Mathematical Mountaintops. Oxford University Press, 177 pages, $25 Mathematical problems mostly come in two kinds. There are the old and easy ones, like "What do you get when you multiply six by seven?," whose answers can...

Yiddish: A Nation of Words. (Books: life in Yiddishland).
February 1, 2002... Miriam Weinstein Yiddish: A Nation of Words. Steerforth Press; 301 pages, $26 A bit more than thirty years ago Leo Rosten published The Joys of Yiddish, a warmhearted book that walked its readers through a wide variety of Yiddish jokes,...

Which God has failed? (Notebook).(influence of Communism)
February 1, 2002... The important thing was not to admit you were wrong in any fundamental way. --Tom Wolfe, "The Land of Rococo Marxists" Political-intellectual currents in the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet Communism continue to stimulate...