| Advertise on ALDaily | Tuesday, January 15, 2013 | VERITAS ODIT MORAS |
Nota Bene Breaking News Newspapers Magazines Book Reviews Columnists Favorites Weblogs Radio
News Radio Music Diversions Classics Refdesk Arts Journal SciTech Daily Dictionary CEO Express Yahoo |
 |
Articles of NoteWhat we talk about when we talk about Stephen Hawking. His genius forces us to rethink the distinction between humans and machines... more» New Age to neuroscience, Daniel Goleman to Malcolm Gladwell, advice books have a new name: “nonfiction with a strong takeaway”... more» Arthur Schlesinger Jr. depicted JFK as firm but careful during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here’s a depiction of Schlesinger: deceptive... more» Forget what you’ve heard: Print is not dead, e-books are not the future, or at least not the only future. Old-fashioned books are back... more» James Wolcott, quantified. The critic is data-driven, tracking steps and stairs taken, hours slept, calories burned. Autobiography is a long flowchart... more» Down and out in Italy. Spendthrift and broke, James Joyce turned to journalism, film, tweed, fireworks, and fending off creditors... more» Nelson Algren lived in brothels, lost everything gambling, and spent weeks in jail. His greatest offense? A refusal to compromise... more» “Those who can’t write, edit.” That aphorism haunts Hugo Lindgren, whose ideas – for books, TV shows – don’t translate from concept to reality... more» The struggle for Harold Bloom’s soul. On one side, Emerson, apostle of the self. On the other, Freud, the pessimist. The battle has been long and fruitful... more» Dave Hickey is a genius, a cantankerous, chain-smoking, art-critic kind of genius who detests collectors, museums, and academe... more» Our memory, ourselves. We are the sum of all we’ve done and all we hope to do. So is retrograde amnesia the end of our sense of self?... more» Kerouac carried a copy, Henry Miller venerated it, F. Scott Fitzgerald borrowed its title. But Le Grand Meaulnes today is little read... more» Self-help is an American genre. Its history is one of gurus and hucksters and an abiding faith that anything can be fixed, especially ourselves... more» The Mozart cult. His work nears the center of civilization, but ease the pain of childbirth? Stimulate brain cells? He’s a composer, not a deity... more» A cyber-flâneur gets lunch. Ruthless efficiency isn’t useful only when contemplating the euro. It also helps Tyler Cowen find delicious kidfo... more» Make clothing patterns, line trunks, wrap food, wipe themselves: People have always done more with books than just read them... more» The Internet apostate. Jaron Lanier – virtual-reality pioneer, wind-instrument aficionado – helped create the digital world. Now he’s a critic... more» Is James Wood abandoning criticism? “It’s tiresome to hand down judgments all day. You want to do something else with the language”... more» The adventure gene. The urge to explore, take risks, embrace change is innate. So how does sailing off the map make evolutionary sense?... more» Camille Paglia has a Christopher Hitchens problem. The late critic, she says, was “committed to no real ideas outside his personal advancement”... more» Charles Rosen’s world comprised a piano stacked with music, a desk and table laden with papers and books, and long, discursive conversations... more» In 1864, Herman Melville was asked to contribute to a volume of literary works. He sent in a poem, and regretted it almost immediately... more» The history of invented languages is one of failure. But that didn’t discourage a former California state employee, or the Slavic utopians who appropriated his language... more» “I have a happy life,” says Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Tom Bartlett wanted to know more, so he had lunch with Taleb. It didn’t go well... more» The data vigilante. Social psychology is beset by sloppiness and fraud, says Uri Simonsohn, who is bringing the perpetrators to justice... more» Pi on the door, pentagonal sinks in the bathrooms, square-wheeled tricycle on the track: Must be the Museum of Mathematics... more» Do you sneer at things predigital, use words like “disruptive,” tap the wisdom of the crowd? Get a grip: You’ve become a cyberguru... more» Of course poetry teaches us how to live, lifts the veil from our eyes. But there’s something else: Poetry makes you weird... more» At 80, V.S. Naipaul insists that he has nothing more to say. But he’s still talking – about the Arab Spring, political correctness, sex, his cat... more» Howard Goldblatt, premier English translator of Chinese fiction, was a late bloomer. “I was amazingly stupid for the first 30 years of my life”... more» For the past 700 years, banking and art have shaped our understanding of value, speculation, and profiteering... more» Serendipity and secondhand bookstores. The future looks bleak for those who enjoy perusing old books on arcane subjects... more» He’s done 8,700 self-portraits and will soon be featured in a Paris art show. So why is Bryan Saunders living in a drug-ridden hovel... more» Four percent of Fortune 500 CEO’s are women. Why don’t more women ascend to the top? Maybe they don’t want to... more» Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic, never met a podium he didn’t mount, a crowd he couldn’t move. “It is a positive joy to put out the fires of hell”... more» The history of boredom turns out to be anything but. What Seneca described as a kind of nausea is necessary, useful, even interesting... more» Minerality, tar, tobacco, gas, cat urine – wine talk is weird. As for the taste of wine, it’s located on that thin line between pleasurable and gross... more» Rise of the carto-geeks. Digitally enhanced mapping alters our understanding of the past. “History resides in the landscape”... more» Secret societies once flourished in Europe, their rituals obscure, their impact outsized. They incubated democracy and modern science... more» Why do hundreds of people attend a conference called “Boring”? Because banality is appealing, especially when it approaches absurdity... more» Want to be a top global thinker? A survey suggests that your best bet is to become a political dissident or a tech visionary... more» Nassim Taleb will talk about what he dislikes – Steven Pinker, carbohydrates, the academy – but not much else. “I’m a private intellectual, not a public one”... more» Becoming a brand name, Damien Hirst says, “is an important part of life.” But his brand has cratered. He broke the rules of the art market... more» Humboldtian science took shape on a trek around South America, where he faced off a jaguar. At that moment, he reported, reason was useless... more» Hacking the neuron. An MIT neuroscientist is building hardware to “solve the brain.” Welcome to the world of optogenetics... more» Sure, the French Foreign Legion is about honor, bravery, adventure, endurance. But really, it’s about simplifying men’s lives... more» The medieval Voynich Manuscript is indecipherable, its illustrations bizarre. A century of scholarship gives rise to a theory: It’s just gibberish... more» What makes a European citizen? Francis Fukuyama puts the question to Jürgen Habermas. The answer, naturally, is complicated... more» “The struggle with writing is over,” reads a note in Philip Roth’s apartment. “I look at it every morning,” he says, “and it gives me such strength”... more» Noam Chomsky vs. artificial intelligence. Algorithms are well and good, but are practical applications obscuring scientific potential?... more» “I was a bit insouciant,” Conrad Black says by way of explaining his crimes. Out of jail, he’s diminished in wealth but not in spirit... ... more» The American crowd has little taste for difficult ideas. It’s an old problem, one that has shaped literary history. Consider Melville... more» Some philosophers reject the premise of biography, that understanding a life can illuminate the work. Ray Monk begs to differ with them... more» Tales from Odessa. The city’s literary brilliance – Babel, Pushkin – lives on in a run-down museum founded by an ex-KGB officer... more» Orhan Pamuk’s obsession with objects: He wrote fiction about an imaginary museum. Then he built that museum. Why?... more» Brash yet logical, sharp-edged yet lyrical, Elliot Carter’s sound was entirely his own. He composed for himself... more» Maurice Sendak had many loves: William Blake, Proust, Mozart, Schubert, noses. He was passionate about noses... more» The roots of MOOC’s. Postal courses, said Frederick Jackson Turner 100 years ago, would carry “irrigating streams of education into the arid regions”... more» Preacher or power-hungry opportunist? Fethullah Gülen may be a cult leader – or simply a well-intentioned businessman... more» Oliver Sacks: place-blind, face-blind, nearly blind blind, prone to hallucinations. But the doctor is more than the sum of his disorders... more» How did Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer triumph over Revolutionary Road and Catch-22 at the 1962 National Book Awards? The fix was in... more» William Manchester’s death left his Churchill biography unfinished. Enter an unknown journalist. “If I didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to get done”... more» What’s so appealing about an asexual, aloof character like Sherlock Holmes? It’s that Conan Doyle created a superhero, not a superhuman... more» “Listen,” Colm Tóibín says. Silence. Nights are spent alone in a hard rattan chair. “Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age”... more» A modern-day Diderot. Like the Enlightenment encyclopedist, Lewis Lapham sifts through history for clues to human nature... more» Secret history of Monopoly. Known variously as Auction and Finance, the board game may have been invented as a paean to socialism... more» How literature became data: The dispiriting tale of intellectual failure begins on a Friday in 2002. Stephen Marche explains... more» Jacques Barzun, historian, essayist, critic, gadfly, is dead at 104. Writing for a general audience, he said, was “a responsibility of scholars”... NY Times... Wash Post... Telegraph... LA Times... Guardian... NY Post... The Atlantic... First Things... New Criterion The psychopathic society. Our era is marked by a casual callousness. Empathy is down, narcissism up. What good news!... more» A man falls into a coma and lands in heaven. (Lots of butterflies there.) It’s a story that a brain scientist could sell. And one of them has... more» Boualem Sansal’s novels are full of big ideas. He has attracted a following in Algeria and France. Now Hamas has made him a star... more» Tom Wolfe in full. Above New York, amid marble sinks and monogrammed towels, the man in white punctures the vanities of others... more» A life in books. Joe Queenan can’t stop touching them, smelling them, scribbling in them, and reading them – 6,128 of them, to be exact... more» We like our politicians authentic – and funny. Though prepared political humor is inauthentic, it’s effective. Can a bon mot win votes?... more» The digital future is nigh. Art grows immaterial, ephemeral, impermanent. Will there be a place for sculpture, that most inconvenient of fine arts?... more» Fatwa against films. In Saudi Arabia, moviemaking can land you in jail. Hide your camera in an abaya so that secret cinema can endure... more» To understand art, it helps to understand the mind, says Eric Kandel. “I see psychoanalysis, art, and biology ultimately coming together”... more» Forgery at its finest. The biggest art scam in history netted millions for a German hippie and his wife. Then they lost it all... more» Naturalist, philosopher, oddball – Thoreau wrote prodigiously but remains inscrutable. “I love Henry,” Emerson said, “but I cannot like him”... more» How to write a 400-page, historically accurate novel in five months? Take pains in the research, of course. And listen to the voices in your head... more» Chinese novelist Mo Yan has won the Nobel Prize in Literature... NY Times... Guardian... LA Times... Wash Post... WSJ... Telegraph... Global Times... New Yorker... Independent... Globe & Mail... At the Obesity Society, every angle of soda is debated, except the argument that drinking it is pleasurable and pleasure is a good thing... more» Clive James insists that he’s not about to die. In fact, the man with every illness in the book is translating The Divine Comedy... more» “Th’ Dustiest of Th’ Dustbowlers.” Woody Guthrie’s “aw, shucks” persona was both genuine and a masterly work of performance art... more» Hitler had no foes more admirable than Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Both died just before Germany’s surrender... more» The Greeks had Oedipus. We have TMZ and the celebration of petty misfortune. We’ve democratized tragedy, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing... more» Chess and art. Man Ray has designed pieces; Damien Hirst, too. The former’s is sleek, the latter’s lumpy. Neither rivals Marcel Duchamp’s... more» Brian Thomas, fast asleep, strangled his wife. He awoke and remembered nothing. Are murderers responsible if they’re unconscious?... more» Is TED running out of ideas? Yes, says its founder, Richard Saul Wurman. He’s got a new notion for a big-think conference: “intellectual jazz”... more» Eric Hobsbawm, historian of Europe, lifelong Marxist, intellectual polymath, is dead at 95... Guardian... NY Times... AP... Telegraph... Independent... Jacobin... Economist... Mark Mazower... Timothy Snyder... Michael Burleigh... Stephen Kotkin... Eric Foner... Timothy Shenk... Ramachandra Guha... James Cronin... Jonathan Derbyshire... James Heartfield... Paul Gottfried... Christopher Caldwell... Modris Ecksteins... Jonathan Jones... Theodore Dalrymple... David Feldman... Morgan Meis... Build your own iPhone. Throw away your nuts and bolts, grab some bits and atoms. Digital fabrication is coming. It’ll change everything... more» Camille Paglia at the Met: “This is the way a museum should be.” She isn’t so sanguine about the contemporary art scene. Or about Stanley Fish... more» Long ago, the search for rules that govern the physical universe was religious in nature. It may yet be so again... more» How do punk rockers pass the time in a Russian jail? Reading the Bible, mostly. “Prison is like a monastery – it’s a place for ascetic practices”... more» The marketplace in your brain. Neuroscientists say they know how people compute value. Why won’t economists listen?... more» “Tastes like chicken.” Why is the phrase a constant? The story began 350 million years ago, with an iguana-like animal, Pederpes finneyae... more» A volunteer fireman in San Francisco, Tom Sawyer went on an epic bender in 1864 with a loudmouthed chain-smoker named Samuel Clemens... more» Derrida in Baltimore. The unknown 36-year-old arrived on short notice. He left days later as the man who tore down the temple of structuralism... more» We fetishize memory, which “can be a burden, even an illness,” says Philip Gourevitch. “Memory – hallowed memory – is a kind of disease”... more» The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. In the world of biblical creeds, will a scrap of papyrus change everything? Karen King believes so... more» Separating the pseudo from science. The greater science’s prestige, the more fringe theories flourish, like shadows of the real thing... more» Is digital self-publishing – its books widely ignored, endlessly revisable – the beginning of the end of literature, of works that endure over time?... . more» The word hung around his neck like a millstone: “Fatwa.” He was no longer Salman Rushdie, writer, but a villain, a victim, an apostate, a cause... more» It’s easy to dismiss Slavoj Žižek for his buffoonish antics, maddening prose style, contradictory arguments. Or maybe he’s just misunderstood... more» Can a robot be moral? Can a drone exercise a conscience? Can ethics be reduced to an algorithm? Answers are inevitable and imminent... more» Can a photograph be true or false? No, says Errol Morris. “Truth and falsity properly considered are properties of language, not of images”... more» “An incredible ass.” Few dispute Archibald MacLeish’s description of Ezra Pound. But was the poet guilty of treason, or was he loony?... more» Three Hasidic Jews and a philosophy professor walk into a bar. On tap, the big questions: God, reason, doubt, the meaning of life... more» An open letter from a novelist. Dear Wikipedia: If Philip Roth is not a credible source regarding his own work, who is?... more» From the Greek for “sneer at or taunt,” sarkasmos is among man’s great achievements. Can it survive our sensitive, oh-so-sincere age?... more» When Naomi Wolf’s orgasms went from transcendent to lifeless, she sought the wisdom of a man who’d seen an image of the Virgin Mary in a vagina... more» The idea of a gentleman seems quaint, the stuff of a Trollope novel. That magnanimous type has vanished, leaving a sad gap in our culture... more» John Templeton had an interest in mysticism and science – and an eye for investing. His foundation is pouring money into philosophy. To what end?... more» The multiple Martin Amises. How to reconcile the scabrous wit, the dark philosopher of evil, and the romantic sentimentalist?... more» Yes, AC Grayling is starting a college. No, he’s not out to “milk the parents of dim rich kids.” Never mind the Bentley brochure outside his office... more» For as long as writers have written, they’ve tried to retract what they wrote. Hawthorne did it; Gogol and Auden, too. They rarely succeed... more» “How good it is to be us,” Christopher Hitchens told his wife. Their life was raucous, joyous, never dull. Carol Blue remembers her husband... more» Doubt is crucial to intellectual life. But a malign and exaggerated skepticism has undermined science. What’s to blame, gullibility or greed?... more» “Don’t think, look!” For Wittgenstein, the maxim was fundamental to his philosophy. Seeing connections precedes understanding... more» “I had suicidal thoughts,” says Clive James. ”They all promptly vanished the moment I was under real threat. There was a sudden urge to live“... more» In any language, the word for red is typically coined before the word for blue. Why? Theories come and go. A new one is in vogue... more» Richard Dawkins talks with Playboy. They discuss the usual things: Jesus, Darwin, creationism, bipedalism, and buggering a bald transsexual... more» “I shall die in the gutter,” Melville said about Moby Dick’s reception. Instead he went to Jerusalem. But he found a backwater, not God’s grace.... more» The path to Infinite Jest. At 28, David Foster Wallace lived in a halfway house, barely sober. "I will be a fiction writer again or die trying”... more» Tom Stoppard is a connoisseur of stories, not topics. A play is not the product of an idea, he says. “The idea is the end product of the play”... more» Plato was wary; Horace, too. And why not? Magic is irrational, a false science. Yet our fascination continues unabated in this rationalist age... more» Overpopulation, famines, plagues, falling sperm counts: Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking... more» Has neuroscience undermined free will? Not at all, says Eddy Nahmias. The science explains how free will works, not that it doesn’t exist... more» Let us praise the pallet. Whether pooled or one-way, block or stringer, wood or plastic, pallets pretty much move the global economy... more» Oscar Wilde’s office job: editing a women’s magazine. He needed money but found a style, later plagiarizing his own work for Dorian Gray... more» Does God exist? Doesn’t matter, says David Sloan Wilson. Better to ask why belief in God has been so useful for so long... more» Steve Jobs is a paragon of entrepreneurial intensity, a role model. Or is his a cautionary tale, of an abusive boss with a broken family?... more» Robert Hughes had an aversion to pretense and a knack for the withering putdown. He tried to save art from the art world... more»... more»... Life’s been pathologized – fear is an abnormal anxiety, persistent sadness a mental illness – and psychiatry faces a crisis of legitimacy... more» Imagine if art were as integral to the Olympics as sport is. Imagine medals for painting, music, literature. That’s how the games used to be... more» Type “Cormac McCarthy” into your smartphone. The result: “Comcast McCarthy.” Is autocorrect progress? Regardless, it’s the future... more» In 19th-century America, the line between seer and scammer was vague. Enter Joseph Smith, who sparked the religious scandal of his time... more» So history adheres to no general laws, no discernible patterns. Then why are huge databases being used to predict events?... more» Lenny Bruce taught Zappa, Mailer, and Roth how to be macho. His fury was not merely nihilistic; Bruce was trying to save the world... more» A museum in Italy is setting paintings on fire. If nobody cares about the art, says the cash-strapped director, “I’ll burn it”... more» |
|
New BooksWhat is it about Jared Diamond that drives anthropologists crazy? The shallowness of his arguments? The breadth of his claims? His success?... more» The color revolution. Out went neutral tints, in came indigo, crimson, lime green. The transformation was total, and all to sell things... more» St. Francis of Assisi was humble, disciplined, genial, and wary of book learning. He called himself “illiteratus,” and he did so with pride... more» The music libel. Listen closely and you will hear how Western music developed in relation to ideas about Jews and their music... more» E.M. Forster’s diaries chronicle the mundane and the semi-obscure – sexual partners, golf, a great aunt. The minutiae capture the man perfectly... more» The controversies of Ryszard Kapuscinski are those of journalism, the writing life, and Poland during the Communist years... more» Making Bach modern. No repeats, no pedal, no precedent: Glenn Gould’s “Goldberg Variations” is an argument for the superiority of recorded music... more» You like the formality of Garamond Premier? The swagger of Baskerville Original? The uniformity of Helvetica? You might be a font fanatic... more» The Alain de Botton formula: Make high-culture allusions and quote promiscuously. Season liberally with a tone of wry knowingness... more» Buying and selling in Rome. Well-to-do ancients window-shopped, haggled, stopped for a quick bite, bantered about dildos. Or so we think... more» Ever feel that Wodehouse’s books are all the same? You’re on to something: “I have only one plot and produce it once a year with variations” ... more» Shakespeare endured syphilis, Jack London ulcers, the Brontës and Orwell tuberculosis. Only the cures were worse than the diseases... more» Capitalism and the good life. There is a limit beyond which material goods don’t make us happier. We believe that. We also believe we are under that limit... more» Invented in France, perfected in England, the essay flourishes in America. There is talk of its demise, but the essay is too protean to die... more» From risqué to femme fatale, the language of love is French. The explanation is simple: Those French insist on eroticizing everything... more» “Don’t be upset if my letters are full of impatience,” said Joseph Roth. “I live and write in a continual state of confusion.” The drinking didn’t help... more» Alan Turing was a courageous, patriotic, but sad, unconventional man. He was also gay. Can homosexuality help explain his genius?... more» Much of the work of an editor consists of breaking bad news: “Your manuscript is not quite right, but do stay in touch.” T.S. Eliot was an expert at this... more» “The films of a nation reflect its mentality.” That’s the social scientist Siegfried Kracauer, whose theory of film permeates contemporary criticism... more» “For” and “four”; “stake” and “steak”; “peak,” “peek,” and “pique”: Why is English spelling so complicated? The trouble started in the sixth century... more» It’s been said that Cézanne altered our conception of the world. Maybe. But comparing him to Marx and Freud? Julian Barnes isn’t having it... more» Saul Steinberg was deep without being difficult, an intellectual who put on no airs, a genius, a prankster, a bad husband. And a grim, self-loathing old man... more» We don’t know much about Titian. The artist was a family man, though he gallivanted with Venetian nobleman and high-class pornographers... more» Philip Larkin didn’t much like the poor, or black people, or other writers, or himself. But he was fond of Kingsley Amis, at least some of the time... more» No institutions, no expectations, no regard for the audience: Geoff Dyer does as he pleases. His capacity for change is impressive... more» Jackson Lears has been thinking about the relationship between intellectual celebrity and conventional wisdom. He’s been thinking about Jared Diamond... more» Before Hobbes, political thought was historical thought, much of it wacky. Since Hobbes, political thought is about ideas, many of them preposterous... more» Imagine a world in which everything is operatic: People don’t talk, they sing; women dress as men posing as women; everything is ludicrous... more» Beethoven’s Fifth is synonymous with artistic genius. Those severe, brooding, portentous first four notes are a masterstroke of misdirection... more» Cézanne was brilliant. But a shaper of the modern world, a colonizer of our collective conscious? It’s an audacious claim, and a foolish one... more» As Martin Amis’s literary powers decline, and his moral pretensions and celebrity grow, insulting him has become a literary pastime... more» Reading Freud in Tehran. Oedipus complexes and incestuous dreams: neurosis knows no boundaries. The talking cure catches on in Iran... more» On epigraphs. They’re more than quotations, more than showoffy mottos. They’re a reminder that creating literature is a social act... more» The science of jokes. Empirical investigations and cognitive theses help explain the cerebral side of humor. But fart jokes remain a mystery... more» Whether working at an ice cream parlor or pontificating on political violence, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were at center of every radical cause... more» What does our vocabulary say about the state of criticism? Words like “interesting” and “cute” have given rise to a minor aesthetics for middling art... more» Before the fatwa, Salman Rushdie wrote great books. Since the fatwa, he’s become a name-dropping, New York socialite. Did the ayatollah win?... more» Is vengeance a price of peace? Consider the forced expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II... more» Fractals, published in 1975, wasn’t just a book; it was a paradigm. Benoit Mandelbrot found order where others saw a lawless mess... more» Keats was firm about what makes great literature. A poet must dwell in uncertainty, he said, “without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”... more» When Mao took over in Beijing, he instituted pervasive control over the lives of ordinary people and stoked a cult of leadership. His model: Stalin... more» You’re at a scholarly conference. You meet Michele, a grad student who is “sort of reviving a Gramscian-style Marxism.” You are desperately bored... more» Joseph Roth was among the last of the cosmopolitan Europeans, a type that did not survive World War II. He died in a shabby Paris hotel... more» The denizens of writing workshops speak of readers and poets as “a mutually respectful community.” Nonsense. They confuse poetry with social work... more» Alfred Jarry – who created ’pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions – wanted life to be like literature, a point he emphasized with a revolver... more» The brontosaur never existed. Spinach isn’t as healthful as you think. Science makes errors, and its history is one of constant revision... more» Should ancestry be ignored, embraced, or discarded? What is family pride? Does being born into a group say anything fundamental about who you are?... more» Cézanne without the luster. In his own time, he provoked outrage. His brush strokes were so ugly, said one critic, “he could paint bad breath”... more» You are what you read. It was true for Proust. In Search of Lost Time is imbued with the ideas of the writers he admired... more» The perplexing case of the Poles and Nazis. Polish gentiles say they helped their Jewish neighbors. The evidence says otherwise... more» Crises force us back to first principles. This is a moment for political philosophy, a moment for one of its most intelligent practitioners, Alan Ryan... more» Derrida may be derided as a purveyor of gobbledygook. But he was that too rare thing, an intellectual who doesn’t have to speak of intellectual matters... more» Thomas Gradgrind and Austin Powers, Holly Hazeleyes and George Savage Fitz-Boodle: What do characters’ names mean?... more» Scholarly writing and journalism are as different as cross-country skiing and downhill. Few excel at both. Then there’s Jill Lepore... more» Skull clamps and scrotum calipers. Harvard scholars poked and prodded students to learn the secrets of a successful life. What did they find?... more» The politics of famine. Mao’s Great Leap Forward caused 36 million people to starve to death. The takeaway? The best foreign policy is calorie-based... more» Anarchish. Reasonable leftists like Yale’s James C. Scott have turned anarchy into a tepid derivation of self-help. What’s anarchy without insurrection?... more» Politics in the age of Caesar: “Surround yourself with the right people.” “Give people hope.” “Know the weaknesses of your opponents.” Sound familiar?... more» Raised in an anarchist utopian community, Gilbert Seldes never lost his sympathy for the radical fringe, the pseudoscientific, the ridiculous or faddish... more» Once upon a time, fairy tales raised social consciousness. Then their revolutionary soul was subverted, commodified, extinguished. Blame Disney... more» Robert Oppenheimer had a personality made of “many bright, shining splinters.” Nothing quite cohered. He was a brilliant disaster, elegant and obscure ... more» Catastrophism. Immanuel Velikovsky was a psychoanalyst who expressed a unifying idea in planetary astronomy. Was he as crazy as his critics thought?... more» Built to last, but for how long? We all want to protect architectural treasures, but sentimental attachments may be stifling creativity... more» How did the Master’s reputation survive the culture wars? He became a shape-shifter, a worldly, gay, feminist. Henry James: He’s just like us!... more» The charismatic, paranoid, melancholic Jacques Derrida acquired his textual tics at an early age. He was reprimanded for his “tendency to complication”... more» Europe under the Soviets. How were its agricultural, conservative, religious regions forced behind the industrial, atheistic Iron Curtain?... more» In 1914 Edward Thomas, 36, wrote his first poem. He was killed by a German shell a few years later, having no idea his reputation would survive... more» Jazz and the Great American Songbook – think Irving Berlin, Cole Porter – evolved together. Then the Songbook style withered, and so has jazz... more» Benoit Mandelbrot set out to alter our view of the world. He succeeded, discovering fractal geometry. He was in his own mind a second Kepler... more» Victim, symbol, sexy mess – Marilyn Monroe has spawned a large literature. Of the many theories, few regard her as a person rather than an archetype... more» Foreign-policy intellectuals attach catchy labels to existing trends. They craft grand strategies, doctrines, op-eds. They have little influence... more» Joseph Epstein: Even his detractors must concede that the man can’t write a boring sentence. His favorite trick: toeing the line between amiable and smug... more» Reading George Steiner. Polyglot polymath? Glorified dilettante? Eurocentric blowhard? Amit Majmudar has some thoughts... more» Cambridge, 1946. Wittgenstein returned after his wartime service, a cranky, mercurial mutterer: “I get stupider and stupider every day”... more» Forget “beautiful” or “elegant,” “painterly” or “sublime.” We now talk about art as “interesting” or “cute,” even “zany.” What do those things mean?... more» Empathy and altruism. To change a heart, tell a story. To change politics, says Martha Nussbaum, it takes more. It takes history and economics... more» Immanuel Velikovsky was wrong about everything but wildly popular nonetheless. The pseudoscientist wanted to be friends with Einstein... more» Is immortality a vain, heedless pursuit, a contemptible act of cowardice? Or is meekly resigning ourselves to our mortal fate tantamount to murder?... more» Gay men call one another many things – “Dinge Queen,” “Potato Queen,” “Rice Queen,” “Princess Pencil Meat”. But how do they learn to be gay?... more» Descartes was wrong: The brain is the mind. But how? The answer lives at the intersection of neuroscience and psychoanalysis... more» Sophocles’ insights into humility and tragedy were elegant and incisive, which is why it’s dismaying to see him handled by a ponderous scholar with a tin ear... more» Knowledge doubles every 15 years. But much of what you know is wrong. What to do? “Stop memorizing things and just give up”... more» Thomas Nagel takes on natural selection. His tools? Inconsistent logic and an idiosyncratic view of common sense. The result? Unconvincing... more» A few scientists write fiction, but the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi has produced a deeply bizarre, deeply imaginative work about science... more» Learning from taxidermy. How we look at dead animals is linked to how we see each other. Taxidermy offers clues – and warnings – about our collective past.... more» Leviathan was always an enemy-maker for Hobbes, for a time the most loathed thinker in Britain. But his heresies helped generate British philosophy... more» Evolution hints at why women lag behind men in the workplace. How to fix the discrepancy? Simple: compulsory paternity leave... more» Poet, war hero, drug addict – Gabriele D'Annunzio was also a notorious womanizer – and, remarked Lenin, “the only real revolutionary in Italy”... more» Followers of Jane Austen faithfully look to her for insights. What explains their devotion? Her novels are the archetypal self-help guides... more» August Strindberg, whether eccentric or mad, had an immense talent for writing, polarizing opinion, and striking up awful relationships with women... more» The real Count of Monte Cristo was a slave and renegade aristocrat, a strapping, six-foot dandy and valiant leader. Did Napoleon condemn him to die?... more» Science and speculation. Do we know what we’re talking about when we talk about the evolution of the mind? Not really, says Anthony Gottlieb... more» A tale of two cities. Hitler adored Munich but hated the hedonism of Berlin. So when it was his, he tried to remodel the city as Germania, capital of the world... more» John Keats was no mere star-crossed, sickly neurasthenic. He could walk 600 miles, and for a time he considered joining the forces of Simón Bolívar... more» Condemned as a heretic, Savonarola was later considered for sainthood. Though convinced he was a prophet, he was no simple pretender... more» Something strange happens when we read the trickiest of poems. We become embarrassed or panicky. Relax. Difficulty is innate in poetry... more» The spat between Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael might feel archaic now, even irrelevant, but it remains misunderstood. It was about sexism... more» Robert Duncan was immersed in myth: Greek, Sumerian, and Egyptian sources; the Bible; kabbalah; fairy tales. All of it found its way into his verse... more» Webster’s Third Dictionary, billed as an unfussy catalog of common English, was simply too much for Jacques Barzun. “The longest political pamphlet ever”... more» The algorithmic takeover. Automated decision-making is on the rise. If this sounds like something from a Vonnegut novel, that’s because it is... more» Bernard Lewis has studied the Middle East since 1933. Now he’s witness to the region’s great upheaval, the Arab Awakening. He’s not optimistic... more» “Rap is poetry,” says Jay-Z, “and a good MC is a good poet.” But a good MC is a good MC; isn’t that enough? Why the grasping for literary stature?... more» Alvin Plantinga’s philosophy is subtle and scientifically informed. His theism is comprehensive, even ingenious, but ultimately hard to agree with... more» Fairy tales are memes, told and retold across generations until only the fittest survive to shape the way humans live together... more» Charles de Gaulle was a genius at blurring the line between myth and history. His legend is a comfortable blanket in which all can wrap themselves... more» A good magic book is like a good self-help book. It must provide user-friendly spells to fend off forces of evil. The Long Lost Friend is that book... more» Aung San Suu Kyi has traded in house arrest for a seat in parliament. Her next challenge: transitioning from godlike savior to pragmatic politician... more» What do you call it when Madison Avenue co-opts Motown jingles to peddle raisins, cars, or cake frosting? The sweet sound of capitalism... more» Hoover and Reagan. The FBI director trusted few but found a comrade in the former-actor-turned-politician. For a time, they shared a foe: UC Berkeley... more» What’s the matter with meritocracy? It breeds a cult of intelligence, a sense of entitlement, and unequal outcomes. But what’s the alternative?... more» What about Katie Roiphe so annoys people? There’s her contrarianism, her controversialism, her solipsism. But give her this: She’s not boring... more» Listening to silence. John Cage knew that nothing is not nothing. It is always something – a provocation, a joke, an invitation to pay attention... more» The language wars have raged since the beginning of language. Battles have been bloody, front lines move back and forth, but there’s no victor... more» When is a book more than a book? When it’s wielded as a weapon, or used to signify wealth, status, taste. Or to wrap food, wipe bottoms... more» At National Review, William Rusher was “the other Bill.” But in many ways it’s Rusher, not Buckley, who shaped contemporary conservatism... more» Philanthropy and foreign policy. Bankrolled by private foundations, the American Century was sustained by an unshakable faith in expertise... more» By the end of her life, Lillian Hellman had accumulated many titles: ”archetype of hypocrisy,” “embodiment of ugliness,” “the quintessential liar”... more» Chomsky’s intellect is promiscuous, his take on linguistics formidable, his view of America cartoonish, and his contradictions glaring... more» There’s nothing funny about scholars parsing political humor. Still, no one else asks an important question: Can conservatives do satire?... more» Why is it that so many academics fail to write well, or even intelligibly? Because too often they write not to be read, but merely to be published... more» Charles Rosen likes difficult prose. Take the Marquis de Sade’s writings – difficult because they’re repellent but “fascinating because they are so sordid”... more» Behind every Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Solzhenitsyn was an overworked, underappreciated wife. Do they deserve pity? No, they deserve more credit... more» Here’s the thing about Pauline Kael: You could trust her diligence and enthusiasm. The question, says Clive James, is whether you could trust her judgment... more» Peter Sloterdijk, who’s never met a neologism he doesn’t like, is an immodest, unfashionable thinker. But when he doesn’t convince, he provokes... more» Paul Auster’s self-mythologizing is epic – and odious. He likens himself to Keats, but Keats would not have published such an ill-conceived, rambling diary... more» | |
Essays and OpinionWhat is a poet’s biography for? A New Life, declares the subtitle of a book on John Keats. But the arguments are old, even if some details are not... more» So you think the brain is a well-ordered machine? It’s not. In fact, it’s anarchy. The well-tempered mind, says Daniel Dennett, is an achievement, not the norm... more» Friendship is protean – and vital. It’s the nectar of life. Who else is going to listen to you prattle on about your interminable divorce?... more» Automation and its discontents. There are few areas of life in which machines have not taken over. Benefits abound, but Julian Baggini draws the line at coffee... more» Taken, made, jotted, foot, or head: Notes are necessary interventions between the things we read and the things we write. Geoff Nunberg explains... more» The biggest problem with the self-help movement isn’t charlatanism, shoddy science, or New Age gimmicks. It is a woefully inadequate view of the self itself... more» The left has long viewed sport with suspicion. Orwell called it “war minus the shooting.” His disdain smacks of smug elitism. Competition is brutal, ruthless, and full of joy... more» The post-scarcity society. Keynes predicted that it would be here by now, that leisure would replace work. Suppose such a utopia were feasible; would we want it?... more» The question of American decline is the question of Western decline. And that leads to Oswald Spengler and the very idea of progress... more» The Pushkin industry. The Russian poet has been used to sell cigarettes, candy, pens, stationery, shoes, perfumes, communism. Myth has long since obscured the man... more» Network of networks, more significant than telephone, television, or computer: The Internet, revolution of revolutions, is an under-recognized cultural transformation... more» Thinking about a graduate degree in literature? Ron Rosenbaum has urgent advice: Stop! That’s no way to waste your life... more» In our culture of proliferation, every taste is given a niche and every niche is catered to. Is this the end of big works of literary synthesis? Sven Birkerts has some thoughts... more» Carl Jung’s unfinished book features a winged magician, a heretical Christian Libyan anchorite, and an ax-wielding god. No wonder he kept it secret.. more» With his gold-rimmed spectacles, passion for all things discursive, biting wit: A.C. Grayling personifies the philosopher as gadfly... more» Bram Stoker was prone to hero worship. And no hero more worshipfully than Walt Whitman, a man with long white hair and a heavy mustache, much like Count Dracula... more» Relativist, prophet of postmodernism, enemy of truth, or elitist defender of the authority of science: Thomas Kuhn was all things to all people. Mostly he was misunderstood... more» Digital maps are the enemies of wonder. All-seeing satellites dampen our urge to explore, making the world a less exciting place... more» Wine and wit. From Falstaff’s tavern underworld to drunken delusions in The Tempest to Cassio’s intoxication in Othello, alcohol aids drama – Shakespeare’s, at least... more» “When the guns talk,” goes a proverb, “the muses fall silent.” Nonsense. War stimulates creativity. The Great War was the great exception... more» High culture was concerned with truth. Now it propagates nonsense. Fake ideas have replaced real ones; fake intellectuals have supplanted genuine scholars... more» There are certain words that pry open our imaginations and make us think about things otherwise ignored. For Robert Fulford, “palimpsest” is one such word... more» Pleasure is the beach, a new sweater, a pineapple Popsicle. Joy is dropping Ecstasy, falling in love, having children. Zadie Smith parses the distinction... more» Culture once meant intellectual heights and aesthetic ideals. Now it means petty entertainment. Mario Vargas Llosa and Gilles Lipovetsky explain... more» Scientists once mocked the pretentious, omniscient claims of philosophical positivists. Now scientism is guilty of the same folly... more» Hunter-gatherers, esoteric cults, revolutionary brigades: We’ve always had a capacity for in-group imitation. And we are as ritualistic today as we've ever been... more» Marcel Duchamp was ambivalent, even embarrassed, about producing art. He was in search of a medium untainted by aesthetics. He was, in short, a Romantic... more» Justin Smith loves kids, he really does. But please stop telling him that a philosopher cannot realize his potential unless he becomes a parent... more» Elegies for ink and paper abound, but are physical books going away? Not necessarily. Handwriting, on the other hand, is toast... more» Homework has few champions: Children loathe it, parents suffer through it, teachers can’t get out from under it. Now the president of France wants to ban it... more» Teenage boys are impressionable. Some fall under the sway of Ayn Rand, others of Tolkien. For Paul Krugman it was Isaac Asimov... more» Amy Leal used to dream about becoming a renowned literary scholar. Now she dreams about her son – that he remains alive and able to eat and walk... more» One hundred years ago, the leading lights of modernism broke ranks with the arbiters of culture. “No single event, before or since, has had such an influence on American art”... more» How did the art world become a hellhole of money-crazed pretension and 70s-era punk-rock-shock tactics? Simon Doonan has some thoughts... more» John Kaag was the kind of kid who worried about the bus crashing, or about getting hit by it, or about his ham sandwich. Naturally, he became a philosopher... more» Omniscient, omnipotent, perhaps indifferent. Is God happy? Not in any way that we can understand. Leszek Kolakowski explains... more» Philosophy used to be spiritual exercise. Now it’s just a job. What happened to the idea that a philosopher’s life should be led philosophically?... more» Culture begins and ends with food. The act of eating together is a kind of social cement, the foundation of family, commerce, culture... more» Harvard wants to enroll the next Homer, Kant, Dickinson. But how likely is it that future philosophers, critics, and artists will be admitted?... more» What makes a good friend? Take a page from the heartfelt and ribald correspondence of Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, and Wharton Esherick... more» Happiness hype. Here’s what we know: Happy people are typically married, healthy, religious. Here’s what we don’t know: Does happiness makes life meaningful?... more» “Even my death will be contested,” said Albert Camus. He was right. The pensive existentialist remains a discomfiting but indispensable presence... more» The story of the Book of Kells is a splendid romance, says John Banville. The ancient codex is fascinating, inspiring, pun-filled, and riddled with errors... more» Want to make it as a writer in Hollywood? Understand this: Screenwriting is a craft, not an art; its values are commercial, not aesthetic... more» Warholism – the belief that popular culture trumps all others – is the dominant ism of the art world. We’re all worse off for it... more» Benjamin Britten still evokes discomfort and confusion. No surprise there: He was a crabby loner who specialized in composing the unspeakable... more» Gone is the snark, the trolling, the takedown. The Internet, once home to antagonists and curmudgeons, is now a den of flattery. Our loss... more» The mystery of gayness: Homosexuals reproduce less than heterosexuals, so why has natural selection not operated against it? A few theories... more» California has always attracted loners, dreamers, and outliers. It is a strange world unto itself. Few understand it better than Tom Wolfe... more» For Adam Kirsch, writerly vanity is like a vicious dog. You try to starve and neglect it into silence. But the animal must be fed... more» Reading is a physical act. Touching the page helps us to feel the words, to learn to feel ourselves. Can we hold digital texts in the same way?... more» The fanatical habit. Philip Roth has spent much of his life alone in a room. The achievement – a few great novels – is marvelous. The cost has been high... more» Arguments for fairness are everywhere. But our use of the term is at best a confusion and at worst a deception. Stephen Asma explains... more» Engineering evil. It is an enduring shibboleth that science and technology are amoral. Consider Albert Speer, who may not seem relevant today. Unfortunately, he is... more» There are about 6,000 languages, though Larry Summers thinks we need only one: English. But prophecies of an Anglophone future are overstated... more» Biology and Buddhism share a view of the nature of reality and the reality of nature. Never mind the aspects of Buddhist tradition that no scientist can believe... more» Why read books? To learn, yes. But also to escape the messiness of life, to establish a sense of superiority, to distract ourselves from ourselves... more» The conscience has long been considered the site of moral reasoning. But from Plato to Sara Ruddick, the female conscience has proven confusing... more» Totalitarianism: The term originated in Italy; the system was perfected in Eastern Europe. It wasn’t about efficiency, it was about remaking man for the future... more» Do you prefer obscurity over clarity? Fond of neologisms? Name-checking Heidegger? Peter Sloterdijk stands in a long line of hip European philosophers... more» Tolstoy preached Tolstoyism, but there was no “Chekhovism.” Chekhov’s genius wasn’t for big ideas, but petty concerns – a small lie, filthy latrines, a slovenly manner... more» Magicians of money. Jackson Lears on the connection between religious belief and social practice, mystical ideas and earthly success, Mormonism and capitalism... more» If solitude doesn’t lead us back to companionship, then where does it lead? Emerson and Thoreau knew well “the dangers of forest thinking”... more» The journalist-as-translator has been replaced by the journalist-as-sage. Jonah Lehrer is a product of this new world, and its first real casualty... ... more» The education of George Scialabba. It arrived between covers – On Liberty and Middlemarch. It is a march of progress, or at least he thinks it is... more» We turn to science for certainty. And scientists are all too happy to play soothsayer. But it’s folly to think catastrophes can be predicted... more» Poet on the road. Having moved for decades from reading to reading, party to party, Donald Hall has some advice: Beware of strangers bearing poems... more» Karl Popper, George Soros, Francis Fukuyama: What is it about promoting democracy that drives otherwise sensible thinkers to embrace extreme positions?... more» The Theory Generation. Franzen, Eugenides, Egan, and Lipsyte were educated while Derrida and Foucault ruled the humanities. Their novels reflect this, uneasily... more» Pass the bone-marrow and caviar. So you think it’s a waste to spend lavishly on food? You miss the point. The meal is ephemeral, it’s true, but so are you... more» The Rotterdam thieves made off with a Picasso, a Monet, a Matisse, a Gauguin, a Meyer de Hann. Wait, who? It must be a clue!... more» History flows from geography. Place is everything. So says Robert Kaplan. What about the impact of ideas? They’re no match for mountains and monsoons... more» The greatest artist of our time? It’s the man who closed the gap between art and technology. It’s George Lucas, or so says Camille Paglia... more» Translating jokes takes luck and pluck. Just ask David Bellos or Gary Shteyngart. Have you heard the one about the pair of translators who walk into a bar?... more» Orwell the anti-Semite. A public advocate of tolerance, he was a bigot in private. His racism was more than an embarrassing tic, more than an emblem of his times... more» Poetry is a salve for emotional pain, says Christian Wiman. For physical pain, however, it’s useless. But as a lesson in suffering, even as a model for how to die, it’s essential... more» They were middle-class Oxford boys who bonded over hatred – of women, Evelyn Waugh, their families. They were Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin. They were Lucky Jim... more» Some dream of a theory of everything, a unity of knowledge. But maybe disciplinary boundaries are not so much an accident of history as a result of how we understand the world... more» Isaiah Berlin was charming, affable, erudite. But was his primary contribution to the art of conversation or to the field of political philosophy?... more» Oliver Wendell Holmes described the camera as a “mirror with a memory.” At that time, photography was not yet routine; a single picture could capture a person for life... more» The fine arts have become a wasteland, says Camille Paglia. A blasé liberal secularism has killed off creativity. More capitalism is the solution... more» In politics, says Jonathan Haidt, truth or falsity is beside the point – a “rationalist delusion.” Likewise the idea that “reasoning is our most noble attribute”... more» Born to lie. You fake smile, fake laugh, think you’re smart and good-looking. You’re neither, probably. But it’s OK: You’re hard-wired to deceive... more» Handwriting is sensuous, immediate, personal. The movement away from writing by hand diminishes, in a quiet but real way, our humanity... more» Theodor Adorno’s mystique. His arguments are essentialist, sweeping, and unconvincing, his prose obfuscatory. Perfect that Judith Butler has won an award that bears his name... more» Allan Bloom may have been many things – culture warrior, scourge of feminism and rock music, “Philosopher Despot” – but here’s one thing he wasn’t: conservative... more» Given the cult that surrounds Portrait of a Lady, it’s worth remembering that its author was a young man crafting subtle yet catty – even bitchy – prose... more» Baathism – the anticolonial, pan-Arab ideology – is near collapse. Damascus is its last stand. What will remain after the fall? Intellectual bafflement and paranoia... more» The world’s worst words. How did they get that way? Overuse, mostly. Here’s the thing: Resistance is futile. “Yesterday’s abomination is today’s rule”... more» The American Heritage Dictionary, once the choice of fogies, stood as a bulwark against the loose argot of popular culture. Yet it was first to drop an F-bomb into its pages... more» Letters from the editor. At The Criterion, clerical routine fueled literary insights for T.S. Eliot, who was masterly at cajoling difficult contributors... more» Free markets and fast growth are well and good, but they won’t make you happy. There remain political, philosophical, and ethical questions that markets can never address... more» Kingsley Amis was a bleak, bigoted curmudgeon. But when it came to the necessary task of skewering snobs and sycophants, and tweaking liberal pieties, he was without peer... more» Self-immolation is an extreme, extraordinary, and increasingly routine act. It has little to do with suicide and everything to do with politics... more» Intellect is a disadvantage in American politics. The curious mind is a trivial mind, unless it’s used to make money. This was as true in Richard Hofstadter’s day as it’s today... more» The new gender economics. In 40 percent of American marriages, the wife outearns the husband. What's the future? A more feminine workplace, a more masculine home... more» Ray Bradbury liked gadgets – indeed, he anticipated the invention of many, including the iPod – but it was the habits of humans that preoccupied him... more» Call it what you want – neuroscientism, neurobabble – it’s evidence that quackery is on the rise. No matter what the question, it seems, brain research has the answer... more» In which Terry Castle explores the fabulously eccentric world of the Jazz Age smart set, muses about sex in the academy, and coins a necessary word: lesbuffoon... more» Politics and the novel. A writer should resist the temptation to simply promote his views. Political fiction thrives on contradiction and irresolution... more» Are you a migrant, living in a city, born poor? You’re at higher risk of schizophrenia. Our social interactions make us who we are, and they can make us sick... more» Those who knew Ford Madox Ford – Conrad, Hemingway – wrote about him. Admired and resented, he’s among the more mercurial figures in literary history... more» Ghost stories make metaphysicians of us all. “Let us honor the marvelous as well as the matter of fact!” writes Michael Dirda... more» When Simon Schama was young, gangly, and peculiar, he fell in love with the essay. Long-form nonfiction, he says, is still “our best hope of liberating text from texting”... more» In apocalyptic times, Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch believed, great care must be given to culture. He died at Auschwitz; his poems survive as a Jeremiad... more» Call Susan Jacoby an “ugly old atheist” if you choose, but don’t dare describe her atheism as “soft”. It’s by no means flabby or weak-minded... more» Great books and grand subjects are soul-saving, except when they’re not. Too much of what gets taught in the liberal arts isn»t great, but merely what interests professors... more» Science’s imperialist ambitions. Are the only real questions empirical ones? Can human behavior be explained by physics or biology alone?... more» Queer kids used to be cool. Now they’re boring and banal. If gay men are to recover their panache, it’ll take some practice. Here’s where to start... more» The dream of a world governed by earnest technocrats, guided not by ideology or nationalism but by efficiency and “best practice,” is an old dream – one with a noble but checkered past... more» Punk tactics and political art. Ai Weiwei shows that one man can shame a state, that art can undermine propaganda and become the conscience of reform... more» Parody gets bad press. It’s mistaken for pastiche; F.R. Leavis thought it “demeaned” those lampooned. But at its best, parody is literary criticism... more» One day Norman Mailer, ever self-indulgent, decided to become a film director. Watching the movies he made is like being trapped in an elevator with obnoxious drunks... more» Why did conservation – a gentle, optimistic undertaking – give way to the more divisive environmentalism? Two words: Rachel Carson... more» Lewis Carroll and Jorge Luis Borges imagined it, and now Google might make it real: a one-to-one scale map of the world. Useful or creepy? “The map is mapping us”... more» Here’s something true about sentences: The ones built for a purpose tend to hold up; the ones built to be beautiful tend to collapse. Christopher Beha explains... more» Sure, “paradigm shift” is a banal buzz of hucksters and marketers. But Thomas Kuhn really did upend the way we think about how science does – and should – work... more» Daniel Mendelsohn is no hatchet man, but he can sling a zinger – and face the consequences. If you want to avoid awkwardness at parties, he says, become a caterer, not a critic... more» Reading is a habit, another thing we do. But then you read something that renews the act. For Sven Birkerts, who has a thing for melancholy brooders, that something is W.G. Sebald... more» Economics is a discipline in denial, says Howard Davies. Flawed models remain in fashion; economists no longer even try to explain the world as it is... more» Can a butterfly build a better TV? Indeed so. And a camel's nose can irrigate a greenhouse. The answer to many of life's problems has already been crafted by natural selection... more» Against acknowledgements. That extraneous page at the end of a novel is a narcissistic, cliché-ridden act of faux-modest self-promotion. Sam Sacks makes the case... more» Hype, superficiality, übercurators: Contemporary art is an easy thing to hate, says Simon Critchley. What can save it? More disgust and revulsion... more» The Economist, Michael Lewis once said, “is written by young people pretending to be old people.” That voice – slightly creaky, sophisticated, at times offbeat – is now that of the new global elite... more» The balance of power in science is changing. Those with analytical skills used to be ascendant. Now it's the custodians of big data who hold sway... more» What’s a national writer to do in a global literary marketplace? Keep telling tales from the margins, says Irvine Welsh. Express your culture, “however movable a feast that is”... more» Morbid curiosity has always been with us. After all, death up close is unusual and uncomfortable--and irresistible. Macabre displays humanize us, says Stephen Asma... more» “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” Samuel Johnson remarked. His was a quaint notion. Remuneration can play too small a role in the lives of artists... more» The tools of hard science – statistics, data sets – have migrated to the humanities. Want to study social networks in Beowulf? You’re not alone. But what’s the point?... more» Enough with America’s tread-so-carefully literary culture, says Dwight Garner. Criticism isn't for uplift. It’s for straight talk, a little humor, and above all, an argument... more» Culture thrives on conflict. Warfare, terror, and bloodshed nurtured the Renaissance in Italy. Peace and democracy in Switzerland gave rise to... what, exactly?... more» Lonely Planet politics: Kim Jong Il was a pragmatist. Iran is benign. The burqa is “a tool to increase mobility and security.” Why do the travel guides coddle tyrants?... more» The end of affluence. Economic growth, a secular religion, is stuck in a long-term fizzle. The future promises to be crimped and contentious... more» Foodie sanctimony is not new. Meet the Michael Pollan of the 19th century, Sylvester Graham. “A greater humbug or a more disgusting writer never lived”... more» What is the nature of knowledge? Can a theory be valid if it cannot be proved? Where does knowledge end and philosophy or religion begin?... more» Edward Gorey’s drawings – macabre and discomfiting, whimsical and witty – reveal “a whole little personal world,” as Edmund Wilson put it... more» The West must tend to “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant.” Kipling? Churchill? No, Tony Blair. What’s with the neo-imperialism?.. more» Rock 'n' roll is thick with nostalgia, says Leon Wieseltier. Enough with the swooning over Bruce Springsteen. It’s unseemly and undeserved. “He is Howard Zinn with a guitar”... more» What happened to the hatchet job? Critics today praise the pugnacity of, say, Pauline Kael, but won’t land a blow themselves. Even well-considered pans are now shunned... more» In the world that TED built, marketing masquerades as theory, charlatans as philosophers, slogans as truths. Evgeny Morozov explains... more» A philosophy of sleep might sound sleep-inducing. It isn’t. After all, sleep is so strange. For around eight hours a day you lose control of your faculties and become delusional. What’s that about?.. more» Religion isn’t just what you believe, says Robert Bellah, it’s what you do. “The misinterpretation of people like Dawkins is that religion is a mistaken proto-science. But religion is about action”... more» What does a dispute among the muses have to do with empathy? Literature helped ignite a humanitarian revolution, or so argues Elaine Scarry... more» Photography is about disappearance: cultures changed beyond recognition, lives long gone. As Cartier-Bresson put it, “A contact sheet is full of erasures”... more» Henry Luce and James Agee were an odd couple. The conservative Time publisher clashed with the rebellious, bohemian writer. Agee fantasized about shooting the boss... more» For W.B. Yeats, the spirit world was anything but false and foolish. “The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write”... more» Walter Benjamin’s oeuvre: Ideas migrate among texts, letters morph into essays. Books are unstarted, unfinished, abandoned, aborted... more» Friderike Burger was 30 when she met Stefan Zweig, soon taking the title of Wife of a Famous Writer. There are worse lots in life, but not many... more» What are aurochs? Caesar called them “elephantine creatures prone to unprovoked attack.” Much later, Nazi ideology, a zookeeper named Konrad Lorenz, and the Heck brothers revived the brutal breed... more» “The idea of a utopia has always been completely repulsive to me,” says Martin Amis. “If you are at all artistic, you want all those inequalities – that’s what makes life interesting”... more» Does quantum physics undermine materialism? Ostensibly, yes. But it sort of depends. Can the mind transcend matter?... more» |
New material is added to Arts & Letters Daily six days a week. We continually test links for reliability. Despite our best efforts, links may fail (often only temporarily) without warning. We apologize for any inconvenience.
New links are added at or near the tops of sections, with older ones sliding down the columns accordingly. Most items will continue to be available for five or more days.
As most links will eventually expire, sometimes after only a few days, we urge readers who see an item worth keeping to save or print it while the link is still valid. Items removed from Arts & Letters Daily are transferred to our 2012 ARCHIVE. We also retain archives for items removed in 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, and 1998.
Our motto, "Veritas odit moras," is found at line 850 of Seneca's version of Oedipus. It means "Truth hates delay."
We have a selection of Arts & Letters Daily gifs and jpgs Web site owners can use for linking. Click here to see them.
Advertising on this page is available. For further information on gaining access to one of the most discerning and influential audiences on the Internet, click here.
Founding Editor (1998-2010): Denis Dutton
Editor: Evan Goldstein
Managing Editor: Tran Huu Dung
Copy Editor: Mitch Gerber
Reader suggestions for links are always welcome. Send them here.
We are keen to hear from readers who detect errors on the page. Please let us know here.
Coding, format, and on-site content copyright ©2012
The Chronicle of Higher Education
editor@chronicle.com