How Now, Iron Johns? How Now, Iron Johns?

In Growing Up Absurd, his classic polemic on shortchanged youth, Paul Goodman remarks, parenthetically, that "the problems I want to discuss in this book belong primarily, in our...

Nov 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Ellen Willis

Curtain Call With Terkel Curtain Call With Terkel

Charles Kuralt, who got around a lot himself but wore out faster, once remarked: "When Studs Terkel listens, everybody talks." Not so many years ago, in fact, we asked Kuralt to ...

Nov 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard

Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir

The author of this review is the son of a zek: My father barely survived his deportation to a Siberian camp in Vorkuta.

Nov 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer

1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize of $10,000, awarded annually for the most outstanding book of poems published in the United States by an American, is administered mutually by th...

Nov 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Marilyn Hacker

The Heat in the Kitchen The Heat in the Kitchen

He poses like a tightrope walker, though one who's unexpectedly domestic and chubby.

Nov 18, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

A Shark in the Mind of One Contemplating Wilderness A Shark in the Mind of One Contemplating Wilderness

A shark swims past me in a kelp forest that sways back and forth with the current. It is deliberate and focused.

Nov 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Terry Tempest Williams

Bland Art in Every Pot Bland Art in Every Pot

In 1989, after several years of controversy, legal wrangling and numerous public forums, Richard Serra's sculptural installation Tilted Arc was removed from a federal plaza in Ne...

Nov 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Grant

Flag-Waving at the Whitney Flag-Waving at the Whitney

The Triumph of the New York School, a deeply ironic painting by the American artist Mark Tansey, looks at first sight like a rotogravure depiction of a military surrender that to...

Nov 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto

Innocents Abroad Innocents Abroad

When people label a film "great," the usual effect is to close off a discussion that ought to be opening.

Nov 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Fighting the Art Bullies Fighting the Art Bullies

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has created enormous consternation and publicity in his attempts to censor an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.