New Criterion articles from March 2005

New Criterion archives from March 2005

Arthur Miller's conscience.(Notes & comments: March 2005)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... What an outpouring of pious liberal sentimentality greeted the death of the playwright and left-wing icon Arthur Miller, aged 89, last month! The Washington Post teared up about the "shatteringly human frailty in his plays" The Chicago Tribune...

Prozac for terrorists.(Notes & comments: March 2005)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... "Democratic civilization," the French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel once observed, "is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it." We thought of Revel's comment when reading The Daily Telegraph's...

Columbia's Jewish problem.(Notes & comments: March 2005)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Meet Joseph Massad. He is a professor in Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. As has been widely noted (see, for example, James Panero's report on our weblog at www.newcriterion.com), Massad is accused of...

Full employment auf Deutsch.(Notes & comments: March 2005)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Are you looking for a sign of how Western civilization is faring? Consider Germany's new policy for those seeking unemployment benefits. Citing an article from The Daily Telegraph, Stefan Beck reported on our weblog that in an effort to address...

The manliness of Theodore Roosevelt.(Letters and Speeches)(Rough Riders, An Autobiography)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... The most obvious feature of Theodore Roosevelt's life and thought is the one least celebrated today, his manliness. Somehow America in the twentieth century went from the explosion of assertive manliness that was TR to the sensitive males of...

Betjeman: a "whim of iron".(Young Betjeman)(John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love)(Betjeman: The Bonus of Laughter)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... The obsession of academic critics with differentiating "major" writers from "minor" ones, and summarily dismissing the latter, serves the interest of no one but their fellow-academics and actively harms not only those authors they deem minor,...

Rubens at the Metropolitan.(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2005... Rubens, I have been told, is an acquired taste. Modern-day viewers, even those with an appetite for the High Baroque, often find him rather over-the-top: the limpid eyes, the ruddy men with bulging biceps and impressive calves, the gleaming...

The difficult justice of Melville & Kleist.
March 1, 2005... There is an old Venetian folk story about a peasant who searched and searched for a just person to be his newborn child's godfather. At last he met up with the Lord. "I need to baptize this little child, but I want a just person for his...

Three poems from "The Sugar Mile".(Poems)
March 1, 2005... This man--me--walks into a pub on Broadway in the golden early September of 2001, opens his notebook on the bar, and starts trying to write a poem. My work is interrupted by an old man called Joey Stone, who laughs to see me crossing out words....

Harry dealing cards.(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Harry dealing cards Put it this way. If I had a suitcase I'd open it and I might iron my shirt but I certainly wouldn't put my socks in drawers because unlike you kids I can't be wasting time on a ruddy farm at...

Robby stretching his legs.(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Robby stretching his legs First thing I'm gonna do is swipe a car and get myself back here. Course I can drive. It's easy, a girl could do it. An Italian girl could do it, couldn't you Joey? First thing. Second...

Sally playing Patience.(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Sally playing Patience It's even got a cinema the farmers like to go there Joey, then they smoke cigars they have a film discussion in a room with velvet fittings. But what nobody tells them as nobody...

The irresistible rise of Trevor who?(London journal)
March 1, 2005... There is going to be a general election in Britain later this year, and in preparation for the campaign the Labour party has appointed a new advisor to take charge of its advertising--someone it must have judged particularly well equipped to...

Avec la main gauche.(Art)(Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper)
March 1, 2005... Cy Twombly has made a lifetime of study out of the incautious line, the art-historical stammer, the naughtiness that comes from the privilege of aesthetic inheritance. He began as an Abstract Expressionist and coasted through conceptualism and...

"American Modern".(Exhibition Note)(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2005... "American Modern" at Hackett Freedman Gallery, San Francisco. February 3-April 3, 2005 The surprise of "American Modern" comes in large part from Hackett Freedman's interpretation of its own grand title. All dating from between 1907 and...

Style-section politics.(The media)(semiotics)
March 1, 2005... Michael Jackson, says Robin Givhan, the fashion correspondent of the Washington Post, "appears incapable of wearing anything that does not resemble a costume, no matter how serious the circumstances." It seems that the King of Pop showed up for...

Andre Malraux: Politicizing literature, fictionalizing politics.(Malraux: A Life)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Intellectuals by and large disgraced the twentieth century. With rare exceptions, they whored after strange gods, of which the most odious and overwhelming was power. Writers, artists, philosophers, historians, even musicians and architects,...

Which enlightenment?(The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Gertrude Himmelfarb The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. Knopf, 284 pages, $25 Although it has already attracted a series of reverent reviews befitting a work by one of today's most eminent practitioners...

Misplaced guilt.(In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Deepak Lal In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order. Palgrave Macmillan, 306 pages, $26.95 The Italians are rightly proud of Ancient Rome, the French revere the Napoleonic First Empire, the Portuguese esteem Prince Henry the Navigator...

Gangreene.(The Life of Graham Greene, Volume Three: 1955-1991)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Norman Sherry The Life of Graham Greene, Volume Three: 1955-1991. Viking, 906 pages, $39.95 Graham Greene, as Eliot wrote of Baudelake, had "a true form of acedia, arising from the unsuccessful struggle towards the spiritual life."...

Serious imagination.(Imagining the Real: Essays on Politics, Ideology and Literature)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Robert Grant Imagining the Real: Essays on Politics, Ideology and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 248 pages, $90 The retreat of academic literary criticism from the public realm is one of the sadder phenomena of recent cultural history. In...

Carl Rollyson: Reading Biography.(Shorter notices)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Carl Rollyson Reading Biography. IUniverse, 105 pages, $12.95 Carl Rollyson reads biographies. He writes biographies. He writes about reading biographies. He writes about writing biographies. Writers are the subject of many of the...

Kate Coleman: the Secrets Wars of Judi Bari.(Shorter notices)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Kate Coleman The Secrets Wars of Judi Bari. Encounter, 261 pages, $25.95 Who was Judi Bari? Ask a certain not-quite-endangered species of North Coast Californian and you'll get pure hagiography: She was Mother and Protector of the...

Pundits & panjandrums.(Notebook)(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2005... One of the temptations of world fame (I suppose), especially when it is gained early in life, must be to treat one's own utterances with undue reverence. Their provenance becomes the guarantee not only of their truth but also of their...