Books and Ideas

Comic Relief, NEA-Style Comic Relief, NEA-Style

The world is a bleak canvas, all black and white, with only some grays "so that the black and the white [don't] bump into each other so hard." The gods are quarrelsome and bored...

Apr 1, 1999 / Books & the Arts / JoAnn Wypijewski

Holocaust Denial: A Sequel Holocaust Denial: A Sequel

The Case of Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments Until the past few months, bestowing any Holocaust honorific upon Binjamin Wilkomirski, the author of the

Apr 1, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Harvey Peskin

Buddha Leaves Suburbia Buddha Leaves Suburbia

If you adored Catherine Texier's Breakup last year, fell to the floor gushing sympathetic tears for the abandoned raconteur and raised your fists with indignant empathy over the...

Apr 1, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Minna Proctor

Red Fox? Red Fox?

The contracts are signed, the treatment is being written and Fox Television plans to fast-track production on a ten- to twelve-hour miniseries based on lefty historian Howard Zin...

Mar 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Tom Gogola

Part of Our Time, Too Part of Our Time, Too

Given the late Dalton Trumbo's various claims to verbal fame--highest-paid screenwriter of his day, most vocal member of the Hollywood Ten, polemicist extraordinaire, winner und...

Mar 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Dalton Trumbo and Murray Kempton

The Forgotten Oscar The Forgotten Oscar

In the run-up to Sunday's Oscar ceremony the focus was on Elia Kazan and whether the Motion Picture Academy was doing the right thing by honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement ...

Mar 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Victor Navasky

Shud He Have Been a Contendah? Shud He Have Been a Contendah?

The inevitable controversy--presenting name-naming film director Elia Kazan with a Lifetime Achievement Award--has unfolded like an accident waiting to happen, aggravating the A...

Mar 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Cliff Rothman

Feminine Mystiquers Feminine Mystiquers

For Danielle Crittenden, the "click" came when she was going to play tennis with her husband and a couple of acquaintances. She left her racket on one side of the court.

Mar 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Kim Phillips-Fein

Montale as Couplet Montale as Couplet

The publication of Jonathan Galassi's translation and meticulous annotation of Eugenio Montale's Collected Poems, 1920-1954 has been justifiably celebrated on both sides of the ...

Mar 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Michael Mewshaw

Soul Survivor of Auschwitz Soul Survivor of Auschwitz

During a wide-ranging conversation I had with Primo Levi in his home in Turin in the summer of 1985, two years before his death, I asked him what effect Auschwitz had on him as a...

Mar 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Gabriel Motola

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