When a former colleague sent me a snippet from The New Yorker of September 22, 2014—a piece called “As Big As the Ritz,” by Adam Gopnik—the attention therein given to two recent books on F. Scott Fitzgerald caught my eye, not only because I had already acquired one of them, but because I was repelled...
Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely night dreaming of a song, but mostly I don’t. Mostly I don’t, because the nightingale doesn’t tell his fairy tale unless he hopped a ride on the Cunard or the White Star Line. No, the real problem is what does happen every day or night, and Jon...
Poetry has to me never been what I have so often heard called a problem, and that was so for the simplest of reasons: It was never presented to me as a problem until I was advanced in school, after which it was reformulated as a target of incomprehending odium by students whose insensibility had...
Two challenging words of the title of this essay stand somehow between us and ourselves, so that we will have to get around the distortions unnecessarily presented by minority and culture in order to see the freedom and even the substance that is closer than we are ordinarily able to perceive. The lesser is minority,...
“My tradition is not to remark on cases where there still may be an investigation,” declared President Obama as he upstaged New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio on December 3, speaking from the White House Tribal Nations Conference. His statement was not difficult to evaluate for its truth content, but remarkable—even from him—for its revelation of...
The life of Lee having been “done,” redone, and perhaps even undone by revisionist treatment, the present weighty phenomenon requires some contextual examination. We might first and simply ask the question, What is the purpose of this book? I mean to say that the revisionist treatment of the so-called Civil War has been gathering force...
I have been receiving so many requests lately for lifestyle advice, tips on public relations and media etiquette (not to mention recommendations about health and beauty maintenance), that I just haven’t been able to keep up with them all. And let’s face it, it’s pretty obvious why so many people ask me. That’s why there’s...
I once presumptuously thought I knew what “political science” was (Aristotle told me), and I even remembered Eric Voegelin’s New Science of Politics, but I was wrong—again. Is there is p-p-pattern developing here? Yes, there is a New Political Science that is a contemporary Zeitgeist, and I am talking about what happens when “science” is...
Some thoughtful soul, not I, would perhaps have some positive words about the present volume, and not without some justification. There is much to be said in praise of the Library of America and the quality of its volumes in various categories of presentation, and in the past I not only have acknowledged such manifest...
My title is not the title the film is known by, but it is, with familiar strangeness, the title that we see, as the credits crawl “the wrong way” (in this film, the right way), imitating the unwinding of the road as seen from a speeding vehicle. In other words, the plane of the screen...
The confusions of our day are so many and so inherent that we have no time or attention to spare for empty issues or nonproblems. The remarkable situation of President Barack Obama is one that deserves some restraint in judgment, for we may soon find that certain difficulties are part of the deal, not individual...
To put this volume in perspective, we have to know that the cartoonist was a young amateur who actually considered making a career of the art, but was then drawn to another mode of expression—one which transcended, perhaps, her cartoons, but also sublated them. They were always a part of her imagination; the habit of...
“Who reads?” That’s what I’ve heard more than once from an “English professor” who spends a lot of time online. Well uhuh, I say, sounding rather like Butt-head, I uh, um you know, read stuff, but he listens not to me. And I admit that I read less than I used to. On the other...
To realize, even delusively, that knowing a little implies knowing a lot because the one is related to the other is to me a great comfort. If, for example, we know one subject well, an understanding of other parallel subjects is implied. Knowing the history of a city says much about the development and decay...
Formula 1 and sports car racing back in the 50’s and early 60’s, when drivers wore polo shirts and flimsy helmets, and before seat belts and other safety-related developments, is for a host of reasons a most appealing topic, but the more you think of it, the less satisfactory is the present result: this book. ...
Time’s choice for 2011 Person of the Year—the Protester—arouses many a consideration. The first Time-nominated Man of the Year was Charles Lindbergh in 1927, before everyone forgot that, on his flight, he wore a suit and tie. Times have changed. Hitler and Stalin were interesting Men of Their Years, and then dead ones. Time marches...
Remembering, as I often have cause to do, the late Samuel Francis’s formulation “anarcho-tyranny,” I have an enhanced respect for the wonder that is our nation, for the wisdom of the government, and for the phonetic ambiguity of the word mandate, particularly as related to the blow for freedom and equality struck by the latest...
Cleo: “Freely lay you your hands upon me, / Yet prudence mandates stern decorum / Lest impassioned, you should spill the wine” (The Oenophiles, I. i, 1-3). Cleo: “No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still / Baloney; yet well accords it with this vintage” (II. iii, 79-80). Ant: “At what hour openeth the...
The opportunity for a reconsideration, indeed a reconstruction, of literary history is, in the case of William Gilmore Simms’ poetry, both enticing and rewarding. In Matthew Brennan’s analytical volume, we find the basis, fully elaborated, for reengaging with a body of work, the worth of which has only recently been reevaluated. William Gilmore Simms (1806-70)...
Professor Stauber is not the first man I ever heard of who has suggested that the American Revolution was a mistake. Sigmund Freud thought that America herself was a mistake and made no distinction about the Revolution, but then he was a Sigmund-come-lately. And that makes Professor Stauber a Leland-come-lately, come to think of it. ...
James O. Tate reviews Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight • by Karl Rove • New York: Threshold Editions • 608 pp., $30.00 There is—there must be–all the difference in the world between an autobiography and a novel written in the first person. Are we clear? Hillary Rodham ...
There is—there must be–all the difference in the world between an autobiography and a novel written in the first person. Are we clear? Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History, for example, has much in common with Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield or even Great Expectations, with the obvious exceptions that the “truth” seems to be fiction, and...
First, you realized that “Holden Caulfield” wasn’t innocent anymore; then, that he was old; then, that he is dead. J.D. Salinger was 91 when he passed away recently in Cornish, New Hampshire, and that means not only that he had been disappeared and aged for a long time, but that he never was young even...
The world is so messy, and the schedule so cluttered, what with the diverse man who shot all the pitiable unarmed military servicepersons, not to mention the Winter Holiday panty-fizzle-bomber, and there was an inappropriate, unauthorized earthquake in Haiti, and yet even more entropically, there was a problem about Americans watching television, or should I...
The recent passing of Mary Travers—who, with Peter and Paul, was years ago always intoning that the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind—brought back some quaint memories of kumbaya moments, and the consoling thought that at least Mary Travers lived long enough to see her political vision fulfilled in the person of Barack...
The financial collapse, which loomed so large more than a year ago as trillions of dollars disappeared and politicians ran for cover, may have suggested a lesson or two. The chairman and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, the former head of Goldman Sachs (nice name, that), the president of the United States,...
Well, of course you’re reading my compelling exposition because of its lapel-grabbing title, but did you notice that my title is in quotes? Oh, yes indeedy. That’s because I got the title from Motoko Rich’s article in the New York Times of May 20, and I didn’t want to plagiarize, or rather I should say...
This volume has provoked in this correspondent a number of Yogi Berra moments—it’s been déjà vu all over again, and for more than one reason. Why, then, am I seized with such a pleasant vertigo? Let me count the ways! First off, I have lived with this material before some of it even happened, for...
The Western setting of this closely focused narrative is a confirmation of the author’s identification with a region, as we know from his Western novels Desert Light and The Homestead and other nonfictional books relating to the West and to the border with Mexico. The text itself, however, insists that this Western setting is more...
Sixty years ago an incident lodged in my memory forever as it seems, as I walked with the beautiful redheaded young lady who paused to ask me a question. There above an old outbuilding—I hesitate to call it a barn—there was a weathervane appearing as the silhouette of a rooster. But this image was perforated...
The Technicolor splatter of blood on the keys in the corny movie A Song to Remember (1945) is a vulgar incarnation of a romantic image of obsessed genius. That image has perhaps more authenticity than a few might suppose, for in the shot, the hands on the keyboard actually do belong to an obsessed genius,...
I cannot remember the occasion, but I will not forget the voice—female, authoritative, and poised—that intoned a dismissal of the so-called yuppies as follows: “They oversee the distribution of toilet paper!” I was a bit thrilled by the superior attitude, being even then no young upwardly mobile professional myself. I thought about the matter and concluded...
An established authority on film, Professor Basinger has updated her monograph on the films of Anthony Mann for good reason. Not only has her original edition of 1979 long been out of print, it has been in much demand. This second edition of Anthony Mann will mean that a new generation of students of film,...
Was it a famed pre-Socratic philosopher or was it Mae West who declared that the way down and the way up are the same? Whoever said it first sure got that right. And if you don’t believe it, then have I got a book for you. I mean, what do you do when they pick...
The Life of Kingsley Amis by Zachary Leader New York: Pantheon Books; 996 pp., $39.95 No, I’m not sorry. I’m not. Really. And I’m not sorry about a lot of things that we won’t go into, such as believing in the 1950’s that “we” were against communism, and such as ever believing that higher education...
This gathering of essays, studies, reviews, and occasional pieces is united by its subject and fused by the imagination and knowledge of the author. Clyde Wilson has responded not only to a host of opportunities as a professional historian and scholar but to sundry provocations as a lively contemporary who knows the implications of ideological...
Hours—or, rather, weeks—spent with the 2006-07 NCAA football bowls may suggest something wrong not only with the priorities of higher education but with the imperial rituals of the nation. There are a lot of cheerleaders and fight songs and marching bands and rowdy fans and excruciatingly bad renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and excellent tailgate...
Professor of history at Brown University, author of The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, The American Revolution: A History, and The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Gordon S. Wood is in a unique position to undertake an account of those Founding Fathers from whom we must feel increasingly estranged. ...
Watching a disaster or beholding a disintegration is inherently destructive, but there is also an element of morbid fascination. Might there be, as well, a redemptive element in tracking the entropic parabola of the great fall of yet another Humpty Dumpty? The national coverage of the recent conventions of the Episcopalian Church, U.S.A., and of...
Reading obituaries is part of reading the newspaper and can be oddly rewarding. It’s instructive and even inspiring to read about lives and careers. Sometimes, we read about strangers, sometimes celebrities, sometimes even people we know—or knew. The gravity of the occasion requires a formulaic response: Without considering the matter, we all know how an...
I do not live in a painting by Magritte or by De Chirico or even by Carmen Cicero—no, really, I don’t, honest, scout’s honor, no kidding—but sometimes I get the creepy sensation that I do. That sinking feeling is an identifiable vertigo not caused by imposing stimuli, such as intimidating heights, but by lesser, humdrum disconnects,...
The culture war takes many forms—or, perhaps, we should say that the war has many fronts, and that the musical conflicts arising from this war are significant ones. Thus, we are convinced, when we approach a car that delivers a pounding reverb of bass, that the driver is not only cultivating a hearing loss that...
The Oscar buzz this year is, in large part, about the prospects of Brokeback Mountain, the “gay Western” that has already won four Golden Globe awards and been nominated for eight Academy Awards. A month ago, Brokeback Mountain had all the momentum, but that is now slowing as some have acknowledged that the film is,...
One of the fascinations of language, and one of the charms of the English language in particular, is the playful resourcefulness, the lexical richness, and the ambiguous suggestiveness of words themselves. And as the English language is the most agglomerative of them all, we are constantly aware of new vocabulary and usage, some of which...
In these biographically minded days, Professor Delbanco has not called his work a biography of Melville—his subtitle does not say “His Life and Work.” I think this distinction is not without significance, particularly because his book takes the form, if not the substance, of a literary biography: It follows the course of an author’s life...
The fate of the famous in this postmodern and even campy time is problematical. The multicultural agenda is not considerate of the distinguished or of distinctions, and “diversity” imposes quotas on what we may be permitted to admire, to enjoy, or even to know. What’s more, “the melting of forms” characteristic of the 20th century...
This new consideration of a well-worn subject is altogether justified for two salient reasons. The first is that Red Star Over Hollywood contains new material and judgment fortified by new research and information; the second, that the topic has been distorted not only by failures of interpretation but by continuing exploitation, even today. The Radoshes...
If, indeed, the second half of the 20th century was, in our country, “the age of Nixon,” as Robert Dole declared in his eulogy for the man at Yorba Linda in 1994, then Mark Feeney has undertaken to demonstrate just how that age fits into the larger category of the 20th century itself as “the...
“O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.” —Walt Whitman I first heard about “brain freeze” from an amiable fellow who was vending Italian ices. He pointed out that, if the ices were not consumed carefully, the freeze would penetrate the palate into the brain. In fact, I did experience brain freeze that way. But...
Susan Sontag passed away in New York City on the Feast of the Holy Innocents at the age of 71. Dying of leukemia after a long struggle with cancer, Sontag leaves behind no image of suffering or weakness but rather one of strength and courage, idiosyncratic integrity and productivity, and a remarkably wide range of...