Focus on Israel Focus on Israel
A spate of new films address the human toll the Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes on both sides.
Dec 22, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman
Untitled Untitled
We all die alone however we can, as for me I'll coil in a volcano's swooning crater or dilute myself in the path's refrains And if my heart stays till trail's end I don't see why my blood can't join the flood beneath this ark, snatching from the deluge of my human pasts, from the face each agony showed me, the cross or port's beacon we sailed from (we sought a belly in common to save us from the mass grave!) Make it so blood swamps me --better blood than brushfire! Everywhere the doe flash fire already in their eyes; these deer, they have the knack of dying lewd. (Translated from the French by Peter Thompson)
Dec 22, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Tchicaya u Tam’si
The Resistance of Painting: On Abstraction The Resistance of Painting: On Abstraction
To speak of a movement of abstractionists would be a contradiction in terms, like speaking of a church of atheists.
Dec 16, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Human Traffic Human Traffic
Sister Ping turned a variety store in New York's Chinatown into a lucrative business by making it a headquarters for human smuggling.
Dec 16, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Ted Conover
Lessons of Darkness: On Peter Maass Lessons of Darkness: On Peter Maass
For Peter Maass, oil is not a drug so much as a Pandora's box. Tap a well and base instincts spew.
Dec 16, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Mark Sorkin
Unidentified Unidentified
Hands touch--set off another round of deals and betrayals! I only hope I don't mistake whose lips and hands! Don't mix up all these break-ups and insomnias. When we let go, I'll try, my friend, to charge my memory! So you won't languish and expire like the others in my poems (the garbage heap of all my Casanovas!). So you won't be washed by rains for millennia, buried in my breast (mass grave for a thousand breasts!)... So you won't --you, my two-starred utter dark!-- end up one more corpse, gravemarker: Unknown. (Translated from the Russian byCatherine Ciepiela)
Dec 16, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Marina Tsvetaeva
The Revolution Will Be Televised The Revolution Will Be Televised
The oral history of America's radical tradition--performed by big Hollywood names like Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Danny Glover.
Dec 8, 2009 / Books & the Arts / YouTube
Containing Welles Containing Welles
Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air and Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces.
Dec 2, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Sometimes a Small Redemption: On Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Sometimes a Small Redemption: On Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
For Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, the fantastical is always found in the startling, dark and unfathomable episodes of daily life.
Dec 2, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
Like Lives: On Lorrie Moore Like Lives: On Lorrie Moore
A 9/11 story modeled on Jane Eyre, A Gate at the Stairs is Lorrie Moore's most ambitious novel, and her slipperiest work to date.
Dec 2, 2009 / Books & the Arts / David Wallace-Wells