Can Men and Women Be Friends? Can Men and Women Be Friends?
Feminism has opened up far more space than could have been imagined in the 1920s.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Floyd Dell and Michelle Goldberg
The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing
December 18, 1943 is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion. Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti; like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the kiwi’s rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind, walks along with its eyes on the ground. It has memory’s ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope’s fall, truly unequivocal because trued by regnant certainty, it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory’s eye; it’s conscientious inconsistency. It tears off the veil, tears the temptation, the mist the heart wears, from its eyes—if the heart has a face; it takes apart dejection. It’s fire in the dove-neck’s iridescence; in the inconsistencies of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it’s not a Herod’s oath that cannot change. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Marianne Moore (1887–1972) wrote eleven essays and seven poems for The Nation between 1936 and 1952. Moore’s biographer, Linda Leavell, indicates that she stopped contributing out of solidarity with her friend, ousted literary editor Margaret Marshall, but also because she disliked The Nation’s criticism of Eisenhower’s “honest, auspicious, genuinely devoted speeches.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Marianne Moore
Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James
Drum-Taps is the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Henry James
1875-1885: Custer’s Last Stand and the Power of Tammany Hall 1875-1885: Custer’s Last Stand and the Power of Tammany Hall
Just as soon as one "boss" is evicted, another rises to take his place.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
The Reporter Who Warned Us Not to Invade Vietnam 10 Years Before the Gulf of Tonkin The Reporter Who Warned Us Not to Invade Vietnam 10 Years Before the Gulf of Tonkin
A farsighted policy might do more to stem the Communist tide than sending a few more plane-loads of napalm.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Bernard Fall and Frances FitzGerald
Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years
The dragging down of the mighty has been not unpleasing sport in all ages.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / E.L. Godkin and Rochelle Gurstein
Is the UK Labor Party Too Moderate to Be in Power? Is the UK Labor Party Too Moderate to Be in Power?
Its leaders speak the language of social concern, yet their strategy is marked by extreme caution, an avoidance of any appearance of radicalism.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Edward Miliband
What Is This New Philosophy They Call ‘Existentialism’? What Is This New Philosophy They Call ‘Existentialism’?
It would be a cheap error to mistake this new trend in philosophy and literature for just another fashion of the day.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Hannah Arendt
The Injury The Injury
June 22, 1946 From this hospital bed I can hear an engine breathing—somewhere in the night: —Soft coal, soft coal, soft coal! And I know it is men breathing shoveling, resting— —Go about it the slow way, if you can find any way— Christ! who’s a bastard? —quit and quit shoveling. A man beathing and it quiets and the puff of steady work begins slowly: Chug. Chug. Chug. Chug . . . fading off. Enough coal at least for this small job Soft! Soft! —enough for one small engine, enough for that. A man shoveling, working and not lying here in this hospital bed—powerless —with the white-throat calling in the poplars before dawn, his faint flute-call, triple tongued, piercing the shingled curtain of the new leaves; drowned out by car wheels singing now on the rails, taking the curve, slowly, a long wail, high pitched: rounding the curve— —the slow way because (if you can find any way) that is the only way left now for you. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) published several essays and poems in The Nation between 1937 and 1961; his work has been reviewed in these pages by Philip Rahv, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Isaac Rosenfeld, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and James Longenbach.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / William Carlos Williams
Separated at Birth Separated at Birth
The Nation and Alice in Wonderland were born within days of each other. In this seditious reading, they rejoin the dance.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Ariel Dorfman