Winning and Losing at the Great Game of Intimacy
What to call this Anton Chekhov, whom I first encountered in 1988? The Master, perhaps—of vision, decency, modesty, and industry, and, one might hope, in the old game of love.
Arts & Letters
The Lessons America Has Taught Me
Fox News Channel’s political anchor Bret Baier’s new book, “The Case for America,” is just in time for the 250th anniversary season. It feels a bit hasty in its composition, which gives a reader the sense that it was a book aimed at a ready market: people who want a book that is positive about the United States at this particularly divisive juncture, when many think the country is on the verge of its third political divorce.
“Even a Nobody is More Powerful Than You Think”
Predictably, a court in Russia banned the documentary film “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” ruling it “propagates extremism and terrorism”; Russia has named Talankin, the film’s main character, a “foreign agent.”
David Hockney, by Surprise
Stumbling upon “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy” by surprise was like waking up to Christmas morning, but reborn as an adult. The size, vibrancy, and overwhelming stillness of this painting are so impressive that it works almost as a trance, or incantation, of natural light.
Who Lost Their Sense of Humor, Me or “The New Yorker”?
Every week, I page through: nope, nope, nope. All I want is one New Yorker cartoon as funny as they used to be, so I can stick it on the fridge and grin at it when I start dinner. Is it me, have I misplaced my sense of humor in…
How, After World War II, Vietnam Became the Graveyard of Empires
Other books examine the same subject, though none are quite the same sort of synthesis this book is, a massive history that reads a bit like a massive novel. Indeed, as the accumulation of detailed narrative mounts, the reader finds it more unreal and unfocused, as if, as George Orwell said, in Asia, the closer and more finely tuned the view, the vaguer it gets.
The Man of Tomorrow, a Creation of Yesterday, Meets Us Today
It can be argued that Superman is a fascist symbol, or that he is a reworking of Jesus Christ or the American tall-tale hero, that he embodies the myth of the American Century, the Age of the American, or that he symbolizes the hegemony of American overreach and dominance. He is the quintessential American and the ugly American in the world of the right and the left.
Modern African Literature Confronts the Constraints of the Global Politics of Reading
Contemporary writers do not inherit Chinua Achebe’s legacy as a neutral resource. They inherit it as a canon that has already been institutionalized, already been absorbed into systems of evaluation and circulation that reward familiarity. To write within this tradition is to encounter a set of formal and linguistic expectations that are both enabling and constraining.
William F. Buckley, Grand Impresario of American Conservatism
Journalist Sam Tanenhaus has provided a warts-and-all look at the most consequential figure of modern conservatism who never held office. Despite its doorstop-worthy length, Tanenhaus’s book offers a masterful example of how to capture a man and his era.
How Victor Hugo Used Sex to Fight Injustice
Every time I read the news, I hear a faint, French-accented cry: To the barricades! Then I wonder what counsel Victor Hugo would give us. The burning accusations in Les Misérables, his most famous and wildly popular work,drew so much attention that the National Assembly of…