New Criterion articles from October 2001

New Criterion archives from October 2001

America's wake-up call.(September 11 attacks)
October 1, 2001... History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it....

The battle of the book: the research library today.
October 1, 2001... In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and France a boisterous debate, traditionally known as the "Battle of the Books" raged for many decades. The issue at stake was one of style: should we accept the "Antients" (to use Jonathan...

The new anti-Americanism.(Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri)(Review)
October 1, 2001... In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. --George Orwell, 1946 Another reaction to the events... has...

The critic as poet: Empson's contradictions.(The Complete Poems of William Empson)(Review)
October 1, 2001... It is now seventeen years since the death of Sir William Empson, university teacher, literary critic, and poet, whose first book, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), is still his best-known. When he died, Empson had published five critical works,...

Triptych: for three tenses.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... I. You find me in every photograph, gravely staring out at you, whispering sotto voce, "Remember..." You try to walk away but can't. Dear one, you must carry me, carry me on your back. 2. You live...

Grass.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... I walked in the waist-high grass where a million blades sang in green cacophony. Too many voices sang. And in the din, I thought, we are as grass, as simple as grass, our voices will be lost and all...

Curio.(Poem)
October 1, 2001... Today, wave upon wave, memories wash up on the bracken-covered beach. I walk the tideline, picking and choosing, making the worthless precious. Stone, shell, carapace, I put this one and that one ...

Clyfford Still: the importance of being earnest.(abstract expressionism)
October 1, 2001... An artist of Old Testament passions, far more alien to the current mindset than his contemporaries among the Abstract Expressionists, Clyfford Still seems an impossibly remote figure. Considering his achievements requires us to confront a...

"Czech Cubism, 1912-1916" at the Rupertinum, Salzburg. July 21-October 7, 2001.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... Perhaps the second most common complaint one hears from people who patronize movie theaters today concerns volume: the soundtrack is much, much too loud. (The most common complaint, of course, has to do with the poor quality of most new...

More & more Mies.(Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)
October 1, 2001... Two immense and comprehensive exhibitions of the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)--one at the Museum of Modern Art(1) and one at the Whitney Museum of American Art(2)--have just departed from New York for international...

Salzburg 2001: Mortier's last stand.(Gerard Mortier)
October 1, 2001... This year saw the tenth and last Salzburg Festival under the artistic direction of Gerard Mortier, and the operas presented in the first part of that festival gave a reasonable picture of the strengths and weaknesses of Mortier's reign. A...

Der Kaiser von Atlantis.(May Festival, Cincinnati, Ohio)(Viktor Ullmann)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Der Kaiser von Atlantis, by Viktor Ullmann, at the Cincinnati May Festival. Among the more inspiring musical revelations of recent years has been the rediscovery of so-called entartete Musik ("degenerate music"), the works of composers...

Bring back the duel!(New Republic accuses Pres. Bush of lying)
October 1, 2001... As is well known, members of Parliaments with rules derived from those of the mother of Parliaments are forbidden from using the word "liar" or "lie" to refer to other members or their remarks. You can see why this rule is a necessary one. The...

A fable for our time.(Cathars)(Review)
October 1, 2001... The Cathars are fashionable these days. This movement of allegedly heretical Christian peasants and minor nobility drew the attention of suspicious religious authorities from the mid-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth centuries in the eastern...

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America.(Review)
October 1, 2001... Louis Menand The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 546 pages, $27 In the early 1970s, Richard Rorty, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, decided that his discipline had reached a point of...

The Lyttleton Hart-Davis Letters: A Selection.
October 1, 2001... Roger Hudson, editor, The Lyttleton Hart-Davis Letters: A Selection. The Akadine Press, 384 pages, $35 Who says we should never complain? Consider the following. In October 1955 George Lyttleton, a retired Eton master, then seventy-two,...

The Marsh Marlowe Letters.(Review)
October 1, 2001... Brown Craig Brown, editor, The Marsh Marlowe Letters. The Akadine Press, 152 pages, $13.95 Who says we should never complain? Consider the following. In October 1955 George Lyttleton, a retired Eton master, then seventy-two, was dining...

Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education.(Review)
October 1, 2001... Jeffrey Hart Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education. Yale University Press, 261 pages, $26.95 To grasp the purpose and scope of Jeffrey Harts new book, which is designed to serve as a refresher...

Philosophers as radicals.
October 1, 2001... The association between philosophy and radicalism is an ancient one and in some ways a natural one. Philosophy is in one sense an intrinsically revolutionary activity, simply because its goal is to put received authority into question. Its...