Art & the Towering Sadness Art & the Towering Sadness
Not long after the attack on the World Trade Center, when my wife and I sat dazed and weeping by the television screen, a call came through from a journalist wanting to know what ...
Oct 25, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
Never Shut Up, New York Never Shut Up, New York
Al Giordano is currently a free-speech defendant in the New York State Supreme Court [see Mark Schapiro, "Drug War on Trial," September 17, 2001].
Oct 25, 2001 / Feature / Al Giordano
Anthrax Anxiety Anthrax Anxiety
Jitters are not among the clinical symptoms of anthrax.
Oct 18, 2001 / Editorial / Bruce Shapiro
A Simple Twist of Fate A Simple Twist of Fate
Serendipity is rotten cotton candy. No, more like actual cotton dipped in rich, drippy chocolate--the confection hawked by Catch-22's greedhead Milo Minderbinder. About a quarter ...
Oct 18, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Tim Appelo
False Positive False Positive
As a child, while waiting for my weekly piano lesson to start, I used to read with pleasure Erma Bombeck's column as it appeared in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. What prehom...
Oct 18, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Caleb Crain
Peace in Our Time Peace in Our Time
The twin towers had barely toppled before the ubiquitous Henry Kissinger was on TV proclaiming the gravity of the assault and the urgency of American retaliation. The Forrest Gump...
Oct 18, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Carolyn Eisenberg
Respite in a Minor Key Respite in a Minor Key
I would like an unbroken stretch of drizzly weekday afternoons, in a moulting season: nowhere else to go but across the street for bread, and the paper. Later, faces, voices...
Oct 18, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Marilyn Hacker
The Devil Made Us Do It The Devil Made Us Do It
"God Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder," the satirical magazine The Onion has proclaimed, citing "His confusing propensity to alternately reward and punish His creations with little...
Oct 18, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Wendy Kaminer
Earth in the Balance Earth in the Balance
It is life that Joy Williams is after in this book about (at times overwhelmingly or bizarrely) death. Ill Nature means her anger, her attitude, but it really means sick Nature. ...
Oct 18, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Joseph McElroy
Can Mark Green Heal NYC? Can Mark Green Heal NYC?
New York's Democratic mayoral primary revealed the city's racial fault lines.
Oct 18, 2001 / Feature / Jack Newfield