Archive for 2010
David Bromwich on the “Disappointment in Obama”
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David Bromwich, the Sterling Professor of English at Yale, reads Barack Obama like a book — as if he were a book, that is. With the novelist Zadie Smith, he often seems to me the only commentator worth reading on Obama, precisely because they bring literary tools and imagination to …
Mark Blyth (2): 2011 Will Be Worse… and Life Will Go On
Mark Blyth, the trash-talking economist with Sean Connery's Scots' accent, says in the misery and austerity of 2011, US will look strangely attractive as an investment.
Wikileaks: A Simulation of Net Wars to Come
Forget Julian Assange for a sec. Is the Wikileaks story really about (1) the end of the open Web and/or (2) a prelude to cyber war?
Chris Hedges: We’re Missing Our Safety Valve
Chris Hedges, the obituarist of our American empire, culture and democracy, says we'll miss our late unloveable but useful Liberals.
Rainer Maria Rilke for Beginners: Whose Words These Are (31)
Rainer Maria Rilke resurfaces in conversation with translator Damion Searls as a poet, like Walt Whitman, for all time and all readers.
C. K. Williams on Whitman’s Music: Whose Words These Are (30)
C. K. Williams, a much decorated poet himself, explains Walt Whitman anew to himself: a magical musical gift transformed Walt in mid-life.
Ian Morris’s East-West History of an Endangered Species: Us
Ian Morris writes History 2.0 of East and West: the pace of development is now so fast as to imply evolutionary mutation or death of the human species.
Mark Blyth on Ireland: The Circle will not be Squared
Public economist Mark Blyth says the Ireland bailout is the worst scandal yet of turning private folly into public debt -- and still there may be no other way.
James Kaplan’s Sinatra: "…an almost operatic version of the blues"
Frank Sinatra -- in James Kaplan's new "life" -- is both tortured volcanic man and transcendent musician and artist.
Dennis Lehane: Between Dorchester Ave and Sunset Boulevard
Dennis Lehane, the novelist of "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone," sees America vanishing. "Isn't anybody paying attention?"
