Cutting Remarks Cutting Remarks
In 1966 Valerie Solanas moved to New York City. At 30, she was already a woman with a difficult past. Growing up in New Jersey, she was molested by her father.
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Claire Dederer
Philosophical Convictions Philosophical Convictions
Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear.
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Richard Rorty
How the Other Half Votes How the Other Half Votes
For years the battle raged across my family's kitchen table.
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / George Scialabba
Come Together Come Together
There's nothing like political disaster to turn soft porn into art. What would Hiroshima, Mon Amour be without Hiroshima?
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Cristina Nehring
Description of a Struggle Description of a Struggle
"You cannot take a man who was all struggle," wrote Tolstoy of Dostoyevsky, after his great rival's death, "and set him up on a monument for the instruction of posterity."
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Tim Parks
Top Gun Top Gun
Of the making of many books about Abraham Lincoln there is no end.
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / James M. McPherson
Wild at Heart Wild at Heart
In 1947 Saul Bellow published a novel called The Victim in which a derelict character named Kirby Allbee haunts another named Asa Leventhal, claiming that Leventhal is responsibl...
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick
The African Predicament The African Predicament
Howard French has written a passionate, heartbreaking and ultimately heartbroken book about covering West Africa's blood-soaked descent into a nightmare of war and greed as a rep...
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Deborah Scroggins
Where the Wild Things Are Where the Wild Things Are
There's a temptation to begin with death. The dark title of A.S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories suggests it; the phrase is also a riposte to D.H.
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Maria Margaronis
Diversity and Its Discontents Diversity and Its Discontents
For most of his half-century-long career, Samuel Huntington, professor of government at Harvard, has made a point of telling the US ruling elite what it has most wanted to hear.
May 27, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Lazare