Books & the Arts

Octopussy by Other Means Octopussy by Other Means

In the movie that has been assigned to us to write about, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Mike Myers from Saturday Night Live plays a secret agent named Austin Powers.

Jun 17, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Cables Coming in From the Cold Cables Coming in From the Cold

Nearly four years ago, soon after the initial public release by the National Security Agency (NSA) of its long-secret Venona archive--decoded Soviet intelligence messages transmi...

Jun 17, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Walter Schneir and Miriam Schneir

Eat, Drink and Be Chary Eat, Drink and Be Chary

J.M. Coetzee's new novella, The Lives of Animals, must be some kind of first.

Jun 17, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel

Indian Music, Sans Sitar Indian Music, Sans Sitar

I am an artless serf of Cupid. So are you and your mama--but not Vikram Seth.

Jun 17, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Amitava Kumar

The Company Picnic The Company Picnic

A Wall Street Journal poll of 350 major corporations found that the median compensation, including stock options, for CEOs last year was $2,635,799. That was a growth of 3.1 perc...

Jun 10, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Robert Sherrill

Pas de Deux, en Masse Pas de Deux, en Masse

A cluster of concepts that, before the seventies, had together formed the received idea of art and artists came under intense criticism in that decade.

Jun 10, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto

A Bookmaker’s Tale A Bookmaker’s Tale

"The real money in books was going to be made not by writing or publishing but by buying and selling the publishing companies themselves." Thus Michael Korda writes in his new me...

Jun 10, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Gayle Feldman

Fast Times at Carver High Fast Times at Carver High

In Variety, where industry rumors congeal into analysis and analysis hardens to consensus, the news is bad for filmmakers like Alexander Payne.

Jun 10, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Master of All He Surveys Master of All He Surveys

As the presidential election of 1996 got under way, the press began to report that Bill Clinton's campaign strategy was heavily influenced by the advice of a shadowy figure who h...

Jun 3, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Schell

Mouth of the Dying Day Mouth of the Dying Day

W.H. Auden observed that biographies "are always superfluous and usually in bad taste," but Edward Mendelson's book on him, Later Auden, is neither.

Jun 3, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Grace Schulman

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