Books & the Arts

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

Hawking Vietnam Hawking Vietnam

With the twenty-fifth anniversary of the American withdrawal from Vietnam hard upon us, readers and viewers may well be treated to a multitude of reprises of the arguments surrou...

Apr 20, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Richard Falk

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

In Moby-Dick, in the chapter "The Fossil Whale," Ishmael proclaims: "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme." The theme of Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde--well, it'...

Apr 20, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Lawrence Joseph

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