Americans and Their Myths Americans and Their Myths
The country suffers from an ambivalent anguish, everyone asking, “Am I American enough?” and at the same time, “How can I escape from Americanism?”
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Jean-Paul Sartre
Dream Song Dream Song
January 25, 1965 The surly cop lookt out at me in sleep insect-like. Guess, who was the insect. I’d asked him in my robe & hospital gown in the elevator politely why someone saw so many police around, and without speaking he looked. A meathead, and of course he was armed, to creep across my nervous system some time ago wrecked. I saw the point of Loeb at last, to give oneself over to crime wholly, baffle, torment, roar laughter, or without sound attend while he is cooked until with trembling hands hoist I my true & legal ax, to get at the brains. I never liked brains— it’s the texture & the thought— but I will like them now, spooning at you, my guardian, slowly, until at length the rains lose heart and the sun flames out. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. John Berryman (1914–1972) wrote five essays and eight poems for The Nation between 1935 and 1970. One month after the last poem was published, he sent a letter to the editor noting the “unremitting hostility” of an unfriendly review by “this bastard,” Hayden Carruth.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / John Berryman
The Gospel According to Wendell Berry The Gospel According to Wendell Berry
To destroy a forest is an act of greater seriousness than we have yet grasped. But to destroy the earth itself is to destroy the possibility of recovery.
Mar 23, 2015 / Encounter / Wendell Berry and Wen Stephenson
1995–2005: Our Enemies Cannot Defeat Us—Only We Can 1995–2005: Our Enemies Cannot Defeat Us—Only We Can
Nation writers on sensationalist art, financial deregulation, September 11, The Sopranos, Texas, the Iraq war and reactionary conservatism.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
1875-1885: Custer’s Last Stand and the Power of Tammany Hall 1875-1885: Custer’s Last Stand and the Power of Tammany Hall
Just as soon as one "boss" is evicted, another rises to take his place.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
The Reporter Who Warned Us Not to Invade Vietnam 10 Years Before the Gulf of Tonkin The Reporter Who Warned Us Not to Invade Vietnam 10 Years Before the Gulf of Tonkin
A farsighted policy might do more to stem the Communist tide than sending a few more plane-loads of napalm.
Mar 23, 2015 / Encounter / Bernard Fall and Frances FitzGerald
Varick Street Varick Street
March 15, 1947 At night the factories struggle awake, wretched uneasy buildings veined with pipes attempt their work. Trying to breathe the elongated nostrils haired with spikes give off such stenches, too. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me. On certain floors certain wonders. Pale dirty light, some captured iceberg being prevented from melting. See the mechanical moons, sick, being made to wax and wane at somebody’s instigation. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me. Lights music of love work on. The presses print calendars I suppose, the moons make medicine or confectionary. Our bed shrinks from the soot and the hapless odors hold us close. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), the poet laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, published two poems in The Nation between 1945 and 1947, when Randall Jarrell was interim literary editor. She was a longtime friend of the more frequent Nation contributor Marianne Moore, who in a 1946 review in these pages described Bishop as “spectacular in being unspectacular.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Elizabeth Bishop
A Report From Occupied Territory A Report From Occupied Territory
The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / James Baldwin and Carrie Mae Weems
2005–2015: This All Seems Eerily Familiar 2005–2015: This All Seems Eerily Familiar
Nation writers on disaster capitalism, Blackwater, Obama, the financial bailout, austerity, Occupy Wall Street, Trayvon Martin and Charlie Hebdo.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
1895–1905: When the American Empire Was Born 1895–1905: When the American Empire Was Born
Whenever a small force of Americans undertakes an expedition, the woods and hills become alive with enemies.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation