Archive for 2009
Mary Karr on Girls and their Dragons
Mary Karr, the poet and ever the “scrappy little beast,” gives me three more reasons to marvel, and cherish her, in her third memoir. Lit, after The Liars’ Club and Cherry, is the story of drinking her way to Catholicism, sobriety and more writing. Her title refers, she says, to the things that lit her …
Thomas Balmes on Documentary Democracy
Thomas Balmes, the French documentary film-maker, coaches us in video anthropology: how to see and share what's familiar in the strange, and strange in the familiar.
The Voice of Gandhi in this "Year of India"
Gandhi's grandson and biographer Rajmohan Gandhi stresses the Mahatma's audacity of non-violence as a nation builder -- and an example for our our times.
Whose Words These Are (15): Bloom’s Hart Crane
Harold Bloom demonstrates the "living labyrinth" of his own poetic memory in de-coding the dense modernism of Hart Crane.
David Bromwich on Obama: Looking at Words Closely
David Bromwich, a Yale literature professor, is making a new name for himself as a "close reader" of Barack Obama and his coverage.
"The Wire" Rewired
"The Wire," the HBO reality drama about ghetto Baltimore, is now a college course, still changing the lives of the people who made it.
Ralph Nader's Flight of Fantasy
Ralph Nader's new flight of fantasy is a "utopia" (meaning "nowhere) in which old billionaires like Warren Buffett finance the Nader agenda, starting with single-payer health insurance.
How God Came Back: Gordon, Cox and West
Cornel West, Mary Gordon and Harvey Cox in a free-form ramble on God's big comeback in bookstores, personal life and world affairs.
Mark Danner: Scoring Assymetrical Warfare
Mark Danner, relentless reporter on tourture and torture, considers a balance sheet of money and morals in the global war.
Ted Sizer: Performance was the only test
Ted Sizer, the school reformer who died of cancer this week, talked with us last year about his vision (both elitist and populist): small-school eye-contact performance-tested learning for every kid.
