New Criterion articles from May 2001

New Criterion archives from May 2001

"Breaking new ground".(critical thinking and the study of great literature)(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2001... Wouldn't it be nice if we could declare a moratorium on the use of certain grand sounding but effectively pernicious phrases and ideas? Near the top of our list would come "critical thinking." In the context of discussions about education, the...

Raymond Aron & the power of ideas.(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2001... It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil. --Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge...

After my own heart: Dorothy L. Sayers's feminism.
May 1, 2001... Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face, however difficult it may be. --Gaudy Night (1935) Might as well admit it: once upon a time, disinclined to mix business with pleasure, I round the very idea of the...

Frantz Fanon: the Platonic form of human resentment.
May 1, 2001... While browsing in a secondhand bookshop recently, I came across an English children's story entitled Although He Was Black. Readers might like to complete the title for themselves: although he was black, he was clean; although he was black, he...

Fresh looks at van Gogh.(exhibitions of Vincent van Gogh's works)(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2001... In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin argued that creating, by mechanical means, multiple copies of something once prized for its singularity and its specific presence in time and space diminished the...

Wild life (on a cat killed by a pit bull).(Poem)
May 1, 2001... The meadow shimmers in the October sun, on warm blue asters, like stars fallen from the gravid sky; by noon the earth, an impatient hunter, fires the wind, blacking the trees, searing the fallow. What can man make with...

Voice.(Poem)
May 1, 2001... for Richard Wilbur Today I am proud of all poets everywhere, For it's true: the voice is sacred, Such is this mix of meaning, muscle, and air. Though they toil in private, as at solitaire, And often will among the...

For John Haines.(Poem)
May 1, 2001... Harsh incantation of Alaskan wind. Let your eyes close, then read the book of snow. The vast wing opens, shifting in its hues. Aurora tilts its wings and turns its page. A wolf's eyes gleam to mirrors of fresh tracks. ...

The Devil's toenail.(Poem)
May 1, 2001... a seashell What might enshrine geology's raw nerve or a French curve spiralling through the line edging this broken shape, this porous, paid-for lime, endowed the rugged climb clown the stone...

The tyranny of anti-racism.(South Africa)
May 1, 2001... Squinting through the hype surrounding the new South Africa, I reckon that the country is in the middle, farcical stages of authoritarianism. On Freedom Day, Women's Day, Heritage Day, and so on, heroes of the revolution pop out of limousines...

A debt that can never be paid: Stieglitz & American modernism.
May 1, 2001... In 1934, Arthur Dove paid tribute to Alfred Stieglitz, writing, "I couldn't have existed as a painter without that super-encouragement." Indeed, it is doubtful that many other early modernists in America would have survived and flourished...

"Out of the Fifties--Into the Sixties: 6 Figurative Expressionists".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2001... "Out of the Fifties--Into the Sixties: 6 Figurative Expressionists," at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York. March 15-May 5, 2001 In this captivating and instructive show, "figurative expressionist" refers to those artists who, in Michael...

"Graham Nickson: Recent Paintings".
May 1, 2001... "Graham Nickson: Recent Paintings," at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York. April 3-28, 2001 Viewers unfamiliar with Graham Nickson's work were likely put off by his recent show of six large canvases at Salander-O'Reilly, put off, that...

Taylor's domain.(Paul Taylor, dancer)
May 1, 2001... A dancer in Paul Taylor's company is not a bona fide "Paul Taylor dancer" until he or she develops a particular curve within a phrase. You see it most readily when the dancer runs in a circle in those little scuffing-slipper steps of which...

The Gambler.
May 1, 2001... The Gambler, by Sergei Prokofiev, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Opera is widely considered to be akin to a tortoise: a thick-hided entity, impervious to change, and moving slowly if at all. The operatic repertory in 1950 featured...

The accustomed perspective.
May 1, 2001... The journalistic and popular cultures draw ever nearer together, and what unites them is the imaginative flight--by now a milk-run--to the top of Mount Olympus from where they look down like gods upon the petty struggles of lesser beings and...

Blurring the borders.(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2001... Less flashy than her compatriots and contemporaries Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, Pat Barker has, over the last couple of decades, been quietly building up a body of work that more than holds its own against theirs or that of any other writer...

Great is this truth.(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2001... An underworld exists of people who believe that we are deceived about the nature of much recent history in general and the Second World War in particular. To them, Hitler was a great man and Churchill was evil. To bypass the objection that...

To Keep the Ball Rolling.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Anthony Powell To Keep the Ball Rolling. The University of Chicago Press, 456 pages, $27.50 "I don't like to meddle in my private affairs," Karl Kraus once quipped, and his aphorism would have made a perfect epigraph to this book. For few...

Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Jeremy Treglown Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green. Random House, 368 pages, $25 Henry Green was a rarity among the British modernists, for he used his daring experimental style in the service of social comedy. As a result, his...

The Death of Jean Moulin: Biography of a Ghost.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Patrick Marnham The Death of Jean Moulin: Biography of a Ghost. John Murray, 290 pages, 20 [pounds sterling] Walking through the market squares of Midi towns, amidst French shoppers wearing sandals and carrying string bags, one often sees...

Words Alone: The Poet T. S. Eliot.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Denis Donoghue Words Alone: The Poet T. S. Eliot. Yale University Press, 326 pages, $26.95 Denis Donoghue takes his ride from a line of Yeats's: "Words alone are certain good." Yeats may have believed this, but Eliot didn't and nor does...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2001... Boswell's "Life" To the Editors: I am grateful for the flattering review of the British edition of my book Boswell's Presumptuous Task in your March issue. Since your reviewer kindly remarks on the absence of errors, it may seem...