Shopping cart (0 items) |
RSS

Uprisings: From Tunis to Cairo

William Pfaff

Dictators do not usually die in bed. Successful retirement is always a problem for them, and not all solve it. It is a problem for everybody else when they leave. What’s to be done afterward? The popular uprising that overturned the dictatorial Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali regime in Tunisia in mid-January sent a thrill of hope through Arab populations.

Aside from the exceptional and complex case of Lebanon, Arab nations have since the demise of the Ottoman Empire mostly suffered from European quasi empire, their own exploitative military and party dictatorships, and recently, hereditary family dictatorships, a reversion to absolute monarchy in secular guise.

More »
Newsletter Sign Up
News of upcoming issues, contributors, special events, online features, more.
From the Archive: August 16, 1979

Letter from ‘Manhattan’

Joan Didion

Self-absorption is general, as is self-doubt. In the large coastal cities of the United States this summer many people wanted to be dressed in “real linen,” cut by Calvin Klein to wrinkle, which implies real money. In the large coastal cities of the United States this summer many people wanted to be served the perfect vegetable terrine. It was a summer in which only have-nots wanted a cigarette or a vodka-and-tonic or a charcoal-broiled steak. It was a summer in which the more hopeful members of the society wanted roller skates, and stood in line to see Woody Allen’s Manhattan, a picture in which, toward the end, the Woody Allen character makes a list of reasons to stay alive.

More »
Exchange

Rescuing Literature: An Exchange

Robert Greer Cohn, Bruce Henricksen, Marian Ury, and Steven M. Albert, reply by Roger Shattuck

To the Editors:

Roger Shattuck is justified in deploring the scientism that has enveloped literary discussion of late, but his rescue plan for literature is touchingly quixotic [“How to Rescue Literature,” NYR, April 17]. It is not enough to talk about the oral interpretation of literature as the antidote to Barthes, Derrida, the structuralists, and the deconstructionists; one must attempt to understand (historically, culturally, psychologically, and morally) those schools of ...

More »