Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Volume 25, Issue 6

In the Shadow of Art Spiegelman: A Graphic Review

Daniel Balserak reviews—in pictures—Art Spiegelman's pictoral book.

Who is Charlotte Simmons?

In short, Wolfe portrays Dupont, and in turn, elite education, as a shallow institution, a shell of its former greatness, listlessly adrift amidst the baggage discarded to reach its present form—God, chivalry, morality, individuality, truth, choice, and intellectual advancement—without clear cause and without obvious escape.

Limning the West: On Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe

Our general culture has—our people have—little notion of where we came from or who we are, and why. So many of us are sleep-walking through time.

Perpetual Fear and Ineffable Outrage

It's a horror story, and it's also a mystery about America. Fascism, communism, and theocracy never captured our government or general public even as these ideologies ravaged millions throughout history. Why? Dumb luck?

Threnody For Old School Dartmouth.

Old School Dartmouth, it seems to me, rejected this kind of abstemious, risk-less living. Every escapade was an opportunity to one-up the one before, and there was little enjoyment or satisfaction found in moderation or restraint. For all their turpitude, when the boys here got into something, they got into it right up to their eyeballs.

September 11th and Noam Chomsky

In 9/11, which is barely over a hundred pages and still manages to be excruciatingly long, Chomsky collects his precious interviews from September 2001. It is a pastiche of a mind unhinged.

The Idiocy of Ideologues

If you ever needed a reason never to do course reading again, Daniel J. Flynn has one for you: The authors of all those "intellectual" books are morons. Or liars. Or perverts. Or deadbeats. Or all of the above.

His Excellency, George Washington

Even if Ellis is overly quick to judge some of Washington's character traits, His Excellency remains an excellent piece of scholarship and a lively read.

American Prospect and Retrospect

These articles offer an equivocal view of the future, emphasizing that to overcome the external and internal forces that threaten us requires an active role by all those who do not want to see the denouement of American civilization. But there is still hope, and that is the important thing.

Whither the Masters?

The Rape of the Masters brilliantly achieves its stated goal of enabling readers to detect rot in academic art history.

Mixology

It is perfect to bring vith you on plane, and pour into McDonald's cup.