Heroine Blues: On Dorian Lynskey and Sara Marcus Heroine Blues: On Dorian Lynskey and Sara Marcus
Whoever sings them and however great they sound, rebel songs can't do your fighting for you.
May 25, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Franklin Bruno
Bob Dylan’s Top Ten Protest Songs Bob Dylan’s Top Ten Protest Songs
Bob Dylan turns 70 on Tuesday. To mark the occasion I've assembled a list of what I consider his top ten protest songs with accompanying videos.
May 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Peter Rothberg
Strauss-Kahn Lightens Gingrich’s Baggage Strauss-Kahn Lightens Gingrich’s Baggage
Yes, Gingrich, our yard-sale Don Juan, Perked up at the news of Strauss-Kahn: Compared with a rape charge, some feel, Philandering’s not a big deal: Affairs, for which Newt has repented, Involved only those who’d consented. But still his campaign’s going south: His foot still gets stuck in his mouth.
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Calvin Trillin
An Imperfect Life: On George and W.B. Yeats An Imperfect Life: On George and W.B. Yeats
Perfection of the life or of the work? The correspondence between W.B. Yeats and his wife George shows the complexities of art and life entwined.
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / James Longenbach
Trials: On Janet Malcolm Trials: On Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm can be brutal in her judgments, but it is the casual brutality of keen observation.
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Miriam Markowitz
Swarf Swarf
If you have seen the fine metallic filings flying onto the fellow who crimps copper into flashing and fashions pivot hinges from brass, you have seen it. This is not the late Bronze Age. There are no palace economies, only the economy of one man milling metal to earn the flimsy dollars that keep him fed. When you knock on his door he quiets the grindstone raises his polycarbonate visor and greets you swathed in a swarm of gold— not war gold or altar gold but the metalsmith’s hard-won residue: swarf.
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Erica Funkhouser
Kerf Kerf
What disappears when an eight-foot plank is sawn in half, yielding two less-than-four-foot boards, a solid term for what’s lost to the teeth of separation. Neither sawdust nor error, nor the labor of gremlins waiting to wreak havoc on perfectly accurate measurements. Kerf—you will know it by its absence, like divided attention. Small consolation: each board as it’s halved releases both sides of a single scent, limewood for linden, pine for pine.
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Erica Funkhouser
The Impresario: On Irving Kristol The Impresario: On Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol was wrong about most things. So why was he one of the most politically influential intellectuals of his generation?
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / George Scialabba
Hordes of trees with unpronounceable names poured down on our suburb Hordes of trees with unpronounceable names poured down on our suburb
As the seasons waned Collided with our own trees grown grassy with meditation Club-footed humilis draped in a coat borrowed from the wolf Quercus with its tympanums pierced by vindictive birds Oleaster black with the secretions of cemeteries We would wait for them with sticks, hatchets and bark-eating dogs Our widows pursued them howling The moon dumped its overload of stones and sparks on them They left without having parted the love-furrow of a single rose Without having touched the downy neck of a single honeysuckle Or showed their wounded knees to the healing beech tree They retreated to the river where they emptied their pockets full of beetles That they had intended for us We witnessed their rout through the town’s interstices From shafts of light kept for heat waves Hairy Disheveled And their sooty souls left traces on our laundry The mother’s heart went out to plebian trees To the elm that holds dreams back at hell’s gate To the golden-eyed arbutus Their photos on our walls replaced those of ancestors gone to graze on the mountains Of a brother who died for having written a book with the words of the pomegranate tree that splashed the doorstep with blood (Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker)
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Unreal Images: On Javier Cercas Unreal Images: On Javier Cercas
In a nonfiction account of a failed coup, the novelist Javier Cercas tackles the confounding history of Spain's transition to democracy.
May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Blitzer