Education of a Knife Education of a Knife
The third-year medical student held the intravenous catheter, poised to insert it into a patient's vein. Suddenly the patient asked, "Have you done this before?" As the student la...
Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Barron H. Lerner
The Pull of ‘New Gravity’ The Pull of ‘New Gravity’
In an end-of-the-year column devoted to "Politics and Prose," Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, asserted that there had been a "new gravity" and "sobriety" to American jo...
Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Mark Mordue
Sensation Sensation
A friend and I were sitting around commiserating about the things that get to us: unloading small indignities, comparing thorns. "So there I was," she said, "sitting on the bus a...
Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Patricia J. Williams
It’s Only a Beginning It’s Only a Beginning
Nearly four years have elapsed since that merry month of May when France and the whole world were taken aback by a sudden and momentous upheaval.
Apr 17, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer
Talking With Jeff Tweedy Talking With Jeff Tweedy
Jeff Tweedy may be best known to Nation readers as Billy Bragg's collaborator (along with his band Wilco) on the Mermaid Avenue recordings of recent years--two great albums that s...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Hillary Frey
Witness in the Territories Witness in the Territories
In the last days of March, at the end of a five-day voyage with seven fellow members of the International Parliament of Writers (IPW) through the battered archipelago of reservat...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Russell Banks
The Undertaker’s Art, Exhumed The Undertaker’s Art, Exhumed
"It's a great mistake not to feel pleased when you have the chance," a rich, disfigured spinster advises a frail, well-mannered boy in The Shrimp and the Anemone, the first novel ...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Caleb Crain
The Show They Love to Hate The Show They Love to Hate
There is an overall disposition to approach each Whitney Biennial as a State of the Art World Address in the form of an exhibition, organized by a curatorial directorate, present...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
African Queen African Queen
Filmmakers in sub-Saharan Africa tend to divide their attention between city life today and village life once upon a time. This rule has its exceptions, of course; but if you're s...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Stationary Stationary
Perhaps time is our invention To make things seem to move Like the uncovering tail of the blue jay As it lights its feet on the wet Trembling wood. Perhaps the seasons are really n…
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Laura Manuelidis