New Criterion articles from October 2000

New Criterion archives from October 2000

False advertising.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Never underestimate the power of suggestion. Consider France's latest literary sensation, Les particules elementaires. We were prepared to believe, as all the advance publicity led us to believe, that the novel was an attack on what The New...

A worthy enterprise.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... "Of all horrible religions," G. K. Chesterton remarked in his book Orthodoxy, "the most horrible is the worship of the god within." Chesterton (1874-1936) is full of such pungent, discomfiting accuracies. (Here's another favorite, from the same...

Does race exist?(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Paul R. Gross writes: The Human Genome Project is on schedule. Its many promised uses, nevertheless, are for the long haul. The New York Times tells us, though, that it has already achieved one invaluable result. On August 22, Ms. Natalie...

From the archives of the academy.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... Dear Colleagues, This is a follow-up email to one I sent you earlier this summer, requesting that you send me the names of women and minority group grad students in your program who will be on the job market this fall. I am writing to...

The genius of Wodehouse.(Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse)
October 1, 2000... Although it is shocking to report, candor requires that I begin by acknowledging that it was not until 1982, when I was in my late twenties, that I first acquainted myself with the sublime work of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. I remember...

Proust regained.(Review)
October 1, 2000... This has been a good year for Proust, for seasoned Proustians as well as aspiring readers of his masterwork, A la recherche du temps perdu. We have two new biographies, not including Jean-Yves Tadie's superb Marcel Proust: A Life, hailed in...

The Marianne Mynah: a memoir of Marianne Moore.
October 1, 2000... On October 3, 1947, Marianne Moore wrote to her brother about a dinner party she had attended the night before, given by Margaret Mitchell, the literary editor of The Nation: I was overwhelmed--crabmeat in alligator pears, each a half...

Successes just missed: the career of Hector Berlioz.
October 1, 2000... The last century was not a particularly happy one for the two greatest composers of the romantic era. There's Franz Liszt--you remember him, don't you? Magpie collector of pianistic glitter? Lothario of Europe? And there's Hector Berlioz. You...

Phryne.(Poem)
October 1, 2000... "It's such a pity that we don't have Anything like a photograph Of her about whom the ancients rave..." He'd been talking about the well-known tale Of her lawyer at her blasphemy trial Baring her breasts to gain an...

Chalet.(Poem)
October 1, 2000... The wild wind, the white wind... Inside, in their long weekend, Perhaps their last, there seems no season Only exhausted obsession With their past, like a film in color Perversely techniqued to black-and-white, ...

In the act.(Poem)
October 1, 2000... Accepting, at a certain age That the world's indeed a stage He sees the phoneys in the stalls For the last time he bellows "Balls!" And then the curtain falls.

A certain exhaustion.
October 1, 2000... In 1990, when I first heard about Albanian Catholic writers, I felt a sense of deja vu. The Berlin Wall had fallen, but for many of us who followed events in the former Communist states, it was unclear how profound or permanent the damage to...

Rudy Burckhardt, 1914-1999.
October 1, 2000... The news that Rudy Burckhardt had ended his life last year, aged eighty-five, was startling and saddening. It seemed impossible that the small, vital, bearded man with the bemused expression would no longer be part of the New York art world,...

Seattle's new "Ring".
October 1, 2000... Richard Wagner's Ring cycle has always been a touchstone as to whether an opera company can be considered in the big leagues. For many years in this country the Metropolitan Opera was one of the very few companies presenting the cycle, and it...

The mote & the beam.
October 1, 2000... Without wishing to add yet another level of incestuous complexity to the subject, I cannot but notice the following lead to a story by Howard Kurtz for The Washington Post on-line: "The Bush-bashing may have faded for the moment, but Vice...

A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation.
October 1, 2000... Dr. Jekyll would not be famous were it not for his connection with Mr. Hyde. Perhaps one reason that Peter Singer's name is well known, both to students of philosophy and to lay people, is that he is a Jekyll-and-Hyde kind of person. As...

Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Michael H. Kater Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. Oxford University Press, 399 pages, $35 Today, the exhortative power of music for political ends is a forgotten topic. But as anyone who was alive during World War II in the...

Elizabeth I: Collected Works.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller & Mary Beth Rose, editors Elizabeth I: Collected Works. The University of Chicago Press, 436 pages, $40 In the last scene of Henry VIII, by Shakespeare and Fletcher, the baby princess Elizabeth is brought...

Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy.(Review)
October 1, 2000... Stephen A. Black Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy. Yale University Press, 543 pages, $29.95. Eugene O'Neill was one of those figures in American arts and letters whose principal stock in trade was domestic agony. His best work...

The difficulty with Hegel.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2000... To the Editors: Roger Kimball's comments on Hegel in your September issue raise troubling questions. Surely Mr. Kimball would not think that a major writer should be treated in the classroom solely with quips, slogans, mockery, and appeals...