From ‘The Split’ From ‘The Split’
Had you entered the thicket in darkness, had the brambles been swiping your face as you passed, had you been mid-life, not in haze but in crisis, had you no other lens but damage to gaze through, had you—thwacked by branches—entered your true love as your true love cried out with her palm on your face, her heel on the small of your back in the darkness, you might have removed the mask from your visage, the glass from the casement, the scythe from your fist. * We were just two drunk kids parallel parking in the dark, you saying, Are you the one with the low down? Under the burnt-out street lamp us kids. Heron coasted by the house, trailing those long legs. No, never tasted heron meat. Dawn: through the Lincoln Tunnel the mammals and their metal, headlighting 42nd Street. By the way, you weren’t born in Omaha. You said your wife changed her clothes at the wedding site because it was too cold in the car. I heard your anecdote, I learned what was an event to you.
Aug 8, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Susan Wheeler
The Reaches of Stringency: On Philip Larkin The Reaches of Stringency: On Philip Larkin
Self-congratulation, deceptions and the art of failure.
Aug 8, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood
Daylight Answers: On ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Daylight Answers: On ‘The Dark Knight Rises’
A massacre in Aurora and the cinema of social hallucination.
Aug 8, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Chris Hayes Gets Called ‘Media Elite’ by Stephen Colbert Chris Hayes Gets Called ‘Media Elite’ by Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert took Hayes to task on his show, holding up Hayes's book Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy.
Aug 6, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Press Room
Hail and Farewell, Gore Vidal Hail and Farewell, Gore Vidal
I don't feel sad for Gore Vidal today. If anything, I feel sad for my country, which lost one of its truest patriots.
Aug 1, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Peter Z. Scheer
Gore Vidal and the Unfinished American Revolution Gore Vidal and the Unfinished American Revolution
A literary lion who ran for Congress and the Senate, Vidal was a displaced American founder in the tradition of Shays’ Rebellion.
Aug 1, 2012 / Books & the Arts / John Nichols
How About Also Taking the Guns From the Cops? How About Also Taking the Guns From the Cops?
The hit BBC show Luther, not to mention real London police, are important reminders that you don't need a gun to be a good cop.
Aug 1, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Cord Jefferson
‘Secundus Defecated Here’: What Ancient Graffiti Means Today ‘Secundus Defecated Here’: What Ancient Graffiti Means Today
If you’re under the false impression that the world is falling into utter moral disrepair, turn your eyes toward Pompeii.
Jul 26, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Cord Jefferson
Alexander Cockburn: He Beat the Devil Alexander Cockburn: He Beat the Devil
The Nation’s longest-running columnist was a witty, brilliant, coruscating presence in our pages for almost thirty years.
Jul 25, 2012 / Victor Navasky
Remembering Alex Remembering Alex
For what the ancients called avarice and iniquity, Alex’s hate was pure. No writer had a deadlier sting against the corruptions of empire.
Jul 25, 2012 / JoAnn Wypijewski