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
A Partisan’s Review A Partisan’s Review
In A Partisan View, one of the many memoirs in which score-settling refugees from the glory days of the anti-Stalinist, pro-Modernist quarterly bite each other on their kneecap...
Mar 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard
Spice Grrrl Spice Grrrl
On a trip to Russia in 1995 I was told by the young writers I met there that when a certain famed Soviet novelist returned to his native land, he was an offensive anachronism to th...
Feb 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Eileen Myles
Remember the Alamo, Part II Remember the Alamo, Part II
On the fourth of August last year in San Antonio, the Alamo rumbled.
Feb 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Bárbara Renaud González
Oscar Who? Oscar Who?
Although the producers of the Academy Awards ceremony like to boast that a billion people watch their broadcast, I take comfort in knowing that another 5 billion do not.
Feb 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Albright’s State Deportment Albright’s State Deportment
Flirtatious and ferocious at the same time, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stamps the world stage over Kosovo, threatening fire from heaven if Serbian strongman Slobodan ...
Feb 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Ian Williams
After Alienation After Alienation
Since the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union, many on the left seem to have swallowed the idea that there is no alternative to capitalism.
Feb 24, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer
The Prophet Vulgarized The Prophet Vulgarized
Trotsky is both the hero of the Russian Revolution--the mastermind of October, the founder of the Red Army--and also its Job, hounded across a "planet without a visa," his family...
Feb 24, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer
So, Is It Back to Bowling Alone? So, Is It Back to Bowling Alone?
The scene with which The Good Citizen opens could have been lifted straight from a Norman Rockwell painting.
Feb 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / David Kirp
What Boddah You?: The Authenticity Debate What Boddah You?: The Authenticity Debate
If there's one thing everyone agrees on about Hawaii writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka, it's that she has a perfect ear for local pidgin dialects, which change cadence and idiom througho...
Feb 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Mindy Pennybacker