A Reign Not of This World A Reign Not of This World
Juan Carlos Onetti immerses himself in reality just long enough to fashion an escape. This is his peculiar gift.
Apr 14, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Blitzer
Scattered Threads Scattered Threads
This year's Whitney Biennial fails to address the question of which art pertains to our time rather than any other.
Apr 8, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Anderson’s Amphibologies: On Perry Anderson Anderson’s Amphibologies: On Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson deftly punctures the EU's self-serving myths, but his own pieties make him a better prosecutor than judge.
Apr 8, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Mark Mazower
A Caller of the Dove A Caller of the Dove
In his poems, Mahmoud Darwish greeted even his own name warily, knowing it was something else he'd be forced to leave behind.
Apr 8, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Jordan Davis
Morning on the Island Morning on the Island
The lights across the water are the waking city. The water shimmers with imaginary fish. Not far from here lie the bones of conifers washed from the sea and piled by wind. Some mornings I walk upon them, bone to bone, as far as the lighthouse. A strange beetle has eaten most of the trees. It may have come here on the ships playing music in the harbor, or it was always here, a winged jewel, but in the past was kept still by the cold of a winter that no longer comes. There is an owl living in the firs behind us but he is white, meant to be mistaken for snow burdening a bough. They say he is the only owl remaining. I hear him at night listening for the last of the mice and asking who of no other owl.
Apr 5, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Carolyn Forché
A = A A = A
Mine to ask a mask to say, A is not A. No one, ever the contrarian, to answer. The moon is both divided & multiplied by water: as chance, as the plural of chant. O diver, to be sea-surrounded by a thought bled white-- a blankness as likely as blackness. What is the word for getting words & forgetting? Might night right sight? I, too late to relate I & I, trap light in sound & sing no thing that breath can bring.
Apr 5, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Andrew Joron
Reading on the Brain Reading on the Brain
In the history of reading, does progress hinge on the weird, obsolete or eccentric among us?
Apr 5, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
A Conscious Pariah A Conscious Pariah
Raul Hilberg, the first historian to document the banality of Nazi evil, nursed a lifelong grudge against the woman who borrowed from and popularized his work, Hannah Arendt.
Mar 31, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Nathaniel Popper
One From the Heart One From the Heart
The superficial sincerity of Noah Baumbach's Greenberg is not to be trusted.
Mar 31, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Lolita Lolita
Once he has swallowed the disappointment of discovering that Lolita in the movie is pushing hard on the age of consent, the libidinous critic must decide what if anything he can ...
Mar 30, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Robert Hatch