Monday, March 12, 2001

A Jane For All Seasons

"Unfortunately for the feminists, Jane Austen is neither a lightweight prisoner of her benighted times nor a deliciously devious mole bent on undermining her social system. She is a virtuoso novelist whose bedrock seriousness permits her to play entertainingly with the faults and foibles of those around her."

The Greek Crack-Up

On Greeks and the CFSC: Whatever happened to Greek leaders at Dartmouth? Seniors and Juniors can remember the birth of the Student Life Initiative, when "the System," rallied by the Coed Fraternity Sorority Council, joined together in a massive rally on the lawn of Psi Upsilon fraternity.

Theories of an Ethical Death

Brimming with disturbing anecdotes and keen observations, Culture of Death explores the history of medicine and bioethics in the United States and reaches some horrifying conclusions.

Smashing a Coconut with a Hammer

On outlaw journalism. In a sort of rotten twist, Hunter S. Thompson—self-described Gonzo journalist, known freak, gun-toting pundit, and half-baked novelist—has become a drug himself. The 'cutting edge' of journalism today, more a dull blade, stews with hopeless Gonzo-isms, first-person, ill-informed, superlative-filled rants, each seemingly—somehow—more empty than the last.

Huxley Essays: A Treasure Recovered

One still has to marvel at the range of his interests and the intelligence with which Huxley explores them. He ranges widely, writing on Marcel Proust and Honoré de Balzac, on the movies, theater, and other aspects of popular culture, on manners and morals, on canonical authors such as William Wordsworth, Ben Jonson, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Voltaire, on current politics and ideas of beauty, and—this comes now as a surprise—brilliantly across the whole range of music.

What More Honor Could They Pay Us?

The book focuses on the University of Illinois, where Spindel is a professor of English and Chief Illiniwek has been the center of controversy. The university calls Chief Illiniwek its "symbol," which embodies such qualities as bravery and determination. It is, moreover, an honor to the native tribes of the area, says U of I.

Beyond the Cricket Test

A novel on race in the British Empire. "The modern civil rights leaders in America would do themselves a service by reading White Teeth. Although it focuses on Britain, it has insights into the everyday American scene with which they are so out of touch. American politicians could use a more 'optimistic vision of racial easiness.'"

Weathering the Wired World

For all the good our technological revolution delivers, society must be wary of the bad that will accompany it. The promises of bioengineering bring with them many ethical quandaries, such as organ-farming, eugenics, and human cloning. Is a moral wasteland the prize for which we sell our soul to technology? This is the central question of Dinesh D'Souza's The Virtue of Prosperity.

A Suicide, a Stripper, and a Dwarf

A mysterious and inconclusive novel. DeLillo uses imaginative and beautifully constructed prose to make a sentence or a paragraph and yet employs them to wander aimlessly through text. And then he just stops.

Letters to the Editor

Stop the whining, bogus racial identities.