A Word to Graduates: Organize! A Word to Graduates: Organize!
It's boring but do it, says the playwright. Otherwise, you allow evil to settle in.
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Tony Kushner
A Whole Earth Catalogue A Whole Earth Catalogue
In the United States a deeply rooted bias toward the practical renders all knowledge, even the most sublime forms of wisdom, merely an instrumental good. This pragmatic streak ten...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Eric Zencey
Backbeat in China Backbeat in China
A hundred days ago Wu'er Kaixi was a fugitive.... Yesterday, before an audience of 800 Americans and Chinese at Brandeis University, he showed what brought a 21-year-old Beijing N...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The Growing Nuclear Peril The Growing Nuclear Peril
A more virulent nuclear era has superseded the perils of the cold war.
Jun 6, 2002 / Feature / Jonathan Schell
‘Blue Clear Down’ ‘Blue Clear Down’
Late in her life, Lorine Niedecker collected several dozen of her poems in handmade books that she gave to three friends. One poem common to all three books is "Who Was Mary Shell...
Jun 6, 2002 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella
Testing Times in Higher Ed Testing Times in Higher Ed
The SAT has been on the ropes lately. The University of California system has threatened to quit using the test for its freshman admissions, arguing that the exam has done more ha...
Jun 6, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Peter Sacks
Ghazal for Lauren Ghazal for Lauren
Sister, they say heed the hymn in your heart. You've learned you've an odd rhythm in your heart. You and I versus our brothers: pitched war. The four of us in the swim of your ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Leslie Chang
‘Trembling…Can Be Heard’ ‘Trembling…Can Be Heard’
A young man of 16, visiting his cousins in Calcutta in a house in a "middle-middle-class area," has just published his first poem. This not-yet-poet from Bombay is the narrator of...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Amitava Kumar
The Browning of America The Browning of America
In the past two decades, Richard Rodriguez has offered us a gamut of anecdotes, mostly about himself in action in an environment that is not always attuned to his own inner life. ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ilan Stavans
Custom Custom
There is a difference it used to make, seeing three swans in this versus four in that quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its effects were. Declarations ...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Carl Phillips