Company Man Company Man
The name Shakespeare in Britain is rather like the names Ford, Disney and Rockefeller in the United States. He is less an individual than an institution, less an artist than an a...
Feb 12, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Terry Eagleton
McNamara: The Sequel McNamara: The Sequel
Apparently to McNamara's mortification, Errol Morris, whose film The Fog of War I discussed in my last column here, passes over his subject's thirteen-year stint running the Worl...
Feb 5, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Cockburn
Men in Black Men in Black
Several generations of doomy, bookish youth have grown up listening to the Cure.
Jan 29, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Douglas Wolk
Europa, Europa Europa, Europa
Considered as a subset of the road movie, the post-Holocaust, return-to-Poland documentary has been a dismayingly static genre. Most of these films are journeys in only the physi...
Jan 28, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Lust for Life Lust for Life
The afterlife of Italian poet, novelist, critic and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini brings to mind some familiar lines from Auden's "In Memory of W.B.
Jan 22, 2004 / Books & the Arts / George Scialabba
All You Need Is a Girl and a Gun All You Need Is a Girl and a Gun
Colin MacCabe's new book is more a provocative polemic than a rounded biography, but it deserves the highest praise for being inspired by the belief that in the early 1960s Jean-...
Jan 22, 2004 / Books & the Arts / David Thomson
The Fog of Cop-Out The Fog of Cop-Out
My dear friend and late Nation colleague Andrew Kopkind liked to tell how, skiing in Aspen at the height of the Vietnam War, he came round a bend and saw another skier, Defense S...
Jan 22, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Cockburn
The Hunt for Hussein The Hunt for Hussein
About a third of the way through the long, long flashback that is Crimson Gold, someone mentions that the main character, Hussein, needs to work outdoors because of his claustrop...
Jan 15, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Bad Boy, Good Manners Bad Boy, Good Manners
Few of the good things that reward the rising--or risen--young artist have not fallen to John Currin in recent days.
Jan 15, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
The Closest of Strangers The Closest of Strangers
Tony Kushner's latest play, Caroline, or Change, left me contemplating its curious title, which suggests an indecisive playwright. Why not just Caroline, or simply Change?
Jan 8, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Baz Dreisinger