The Return of the Culture Wars The Return of the Culture Wars
As before, hypocrites are lining their coffers by pandering to ignorance and xenophobia.
Jan 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Doug Harvey
The Weasel’s Tooth: On W.B. Yeats The Weasel’s Tooth: On W.B. Yeats
W.B. Yeats’s poems on Ireland contemplate failures: not of poetry but of public life in all its forms.
Jan 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Burt
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Merrill Gilfillan’s The Bark of the Dog and The Warbler Road; Tony Judt’s The Memory Chalet.
Jan 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella
The Ballad of John and J.D.: On John Lennon and J.D. Salinger The Ballad of John and J.D.: On John Lennon and J.D. Salinger
Mark David Chapman was carrying a copy of The Catcher in the Rye when he shot John Lennon. The murder was a collision of cultures.
Jan 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Charles Taylor
Languaging Languaging
Can a second language provide us with a new self?
Jan 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
Slacker Friday Slacker Friday
Eric Alterman rounds up the best of New York, confronts Reagan's Alzheimer's and reader mail.
Jan 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman
Obama: Triangulation 2.0? Obama: Triangulation 2.0?
In year three, will Obama heed the lessons of Clinton or Reagan?
Jan 20, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Ari Berman
A Short Analysis of Sarah Palin’s Video Speech on the Tucson Shootings A Short Analysis of Sarah Palin’s Video Speech on the Tucson Shootings
What's uppermost on her mind.
Jan 20, 2011 / Column / Calvin Trillin
Library Man: On Claude Lévi-Strauss Library Man: On Claude Lévi-Strauss
With a sharp eye for cultural patterns and a keen feel for the shape of a story, Claude Lévi-Strauss was a poet in the laboratory of anthropology.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s ‘Problems in General Linguistics’ (Paris 1966) Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s ‘Problems in General Linguistics’ (Paris 1966)
Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste's Problems in General Linguistics (Paris 1966) This time I forgive you but I shall not forgive you again. I observe that he forgives you but he will not forgive you again. Although I eat this fish I don't know its name. Spirits watch over the soul of course. I suppose and I presume. I pose and I resume. I suppose I have a horse. How in the world can you afford this house I said and she said I had a good divorce. Strangers are warned that here there is a fierce, fast dog. Whores have no business getting lost in the fog. Is it to your ears or your soul that my voice is intolerable? Whether Florinda lays a hand on his knee or his voluble, he pleads a headache and the narrator concludes, The problem is insoluble.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Anne Carson