France: The Film Vote France: The Film Vote
Politics were never far from anyone's mind at this year's fifty-fifth Cannes International Film Festival, which unfolded in a France still reeling from the shock of far-right cand...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Leslie Camhi
A Bombmaker of Conscience A Bombmaker of Conscience
We are all fascinated by the lives of the powerful and famous, and in the last part of the twentieth century Andrei Sakharov became one of Russia's most famous. He burst onto the ...
Jun 13, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Dusko Doder
‘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
Global Rights: The Movies Global Rights: The Movies
As all reputable news outlets assure us, privatization benefits everyone--which is lucky, since these same outlets report that privatization is inevitable. We live out a happy fat...
Jun 6, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
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A more virulent nuclear era has superseded the perils of the cold war.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
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
Singing to Power Singing to Power
British folk-rocker Billy Bragg has to be the only popular musician who could score some airtime with a song about the global justice movement. The first single from Bragg's En...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Hillary Frey
‘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
Barnett Newman and the Heroic Sublime Barnett Newman and the Heroic Sublime
Henry James could not resist giving the hero of his 1877 novel The American the allegorical name "Newman," but he went out of his way to describe him as a muscular Christian, to d...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto