The Troves of Academe The Troves of Academe
"A university," poet John Ciardi acidly observed, "is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students." Add this contemporary counterpunch: A college is what a...
May 25, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Carlin Romano
Sartre’s Roads to Freedom Sartre’s Roads to Freedom
Asked where he was coming from, my friend's son replied, "From the demo against the death of Sartre." It was April 19, 1980, and the definition fitted perfectly, for Sartre's fun...
May 18, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer
A Closing of the American Kind A Closing of the American Kind
You will recall that when Augie March went to Mexico, he hooked up with an eagle, which he called Caligula.
May 11, 2000 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard
Village Idiots, Then & Now Village Idiots, Then & Now
To watch Lars von Trier's The Idiots is to see a dead dog rise and howl at the moon.
May 11, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Circus Minimus Circus Minimus
According to Gibbon, the emperor Commodus spent the early years of his reign "in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women and as many boys, of every rank and of every province...
May 3, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Hip-Hop Politics on Campus Hip-Hop Politics on Campus
"You have no idea how much love I got for this," says David Jamil Muhammad, referring to his role as a student organizer of "Hip-Hop Generation--Hip-Hop as a Movement." The confe...
Apr 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Johnny Temple
Lost in Amazonia Lost in Amazonia
After a century of repressing or deriding Woman as a symbol of beauty, high culture in the West has suddenly gone over.
Apr 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Wendy Steiner
The Intervention Blues The Intervention Blues
Perhaps one of the most fatuous theories ever promulgated was Francis Fukuyama's "End of History," put forth just as, in most parts of the world, history resumed its sanguinary p...
Apr 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Ian Williams
On Tyson vs. Downey On Tyson vs. Downey
I was watching Mike Tyson knock Robert Downey Jr. to the floor when the thought popped into my head, "Is this what I want from a movie?" It was a pressing question.
Apr 27, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Art of the Free and Brave Art of the Free and Brave
A woman I know once agreed to take a young Asian child to visit a school in New York, to which her distant parents considered sending her.
Apr 20, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto