Russia’s Potemkin Leader Russia’s Potemkin Leader
Modern Russian history, as taught by Clinton Administration spin doctors and Op-Ed pundits, holds that Boris Yeltsin dismembered the Soviet Union and set Russia on a historic pat...
Jan 11, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Dusko Doder
Dude, Where’s My Klawans? Dude, Where’s My Klawans?
Commenting on the German film Run Lola Run two years ago, The Nation's redoubtable film critic, Stuart Klawans, quoted a character speaking nominally of soccer: "The ball is round...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / The Editors
In Our Orbit In Our Orbit
TROOPS IN THE STREETS Nation contributing editor and radio host Marc Cooper was tossed out of the California State University system for antiwar activities in 1971 by executive ...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / The Editors
Behind Mount Rushdie Behind Mount Rushdie
About a year ago, Amit Chaudhuri published in the Times Literary Supplement a panoramic survey of the past century or so of Indian writing and its reception in the West. He obser...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Sumana Raychaudhuri
The Führer Furor The Führer Furor
Chaplinesque Rapscallion New Leader of Germany's National Socialist Party --The Onion "I have nothing to say about Hitler." With this...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Paul Reitter
How Stands the Union? How Stands the Union?
In their campaigns for the White House, the major-party candidates--even the one backed by labor--spent little time debating labor-law reform. Nevertheless, the AFL-CIO ha...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Steve Early
Yuletide All the Time Yuletide All the Time
We're sorry, but we do not have permission to present this article on our website. It is an excerpt from Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World (Metropolitan). © ...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Eduardo Galeano
Dream Notebook Dream Notebook
What will become of these my many lives, abandoned each morning abruptly to their own fates? Of the fox who stopped to look up at me, bright death stippling her muzzle, and...
Jan 5, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Jane Hirshfield
The Living Thought of Military Dictatorships The Living Thought of Military Dictatorships
We're sorry, but we do not have permission to present this article on our website. It is an excerpt from Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World (Metropolitan). © 2000 by Eduardo Galeano. Translation © 2000 by Mark Fried.
Dec 22, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Eduardo Galeano
Unsolicited Survey Unsolicited Survey
Have you been there? If so, can you describe the shape of the shadows? When you entered, did anyone greet you? Did the moss hug your foot or a jay screech in your ear? Were you afraid you would not get back? Did they ring a bell? How many times, and what did it sound like? Did a horse bow its head by the side of a road? Did a single feather lie at the clearing? Did a green wave cascade into a grove? Did the flavor of light infect your sleep? Did a toad leap from the dust onto a twig? Did deer turn in terror as you passed? Did a doe lick your hand and find you wanting? Did you behold a flower that cannot fade? Was the sky so empty that you fell upward? Did the needles of a pine tickle your nose? Did you sniff the ghost of the cedars of Lebanon? Did you follow a petal blown to the edge of the sea? Did you wake with a sheet twisted around your throat? Did you call out? Did you kneel at a blade of grass or at the mound of an anthill? Did you ask for a way in or a way out? Did a bough sway imperceptibly? Did you rest your hand on the shoulder of a god? Did you open a piece of fruit and offer a portion of it to the sun? How long did it take to finish, and were you satisfied? Did a fly sip some water from a stone? Did you touch the haze on a plum, its blue cloud? Did you rub its skin until it lost its bloom? Did the day burn in a crow's eye? Were the stars so clear another heaven appeared behind them? Did you hear the wind consoling the leaves? Did you look inside the cap of a mushroom, and part the curtain of disbelief?
Dec 22, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Phillis Levin