The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

December 1995 Volume 14, Number 4  

Notes & Comments

Onanastics, anyone?

Virtual art


Features

The achievement of Ralph Ellison
by James Tuttleton
On the career of Ralph Ellison and The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison edited by John F. Callahan.

The achievement of Ralph Ellison
by James Tuttleton
On Ellison's career and The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison edited by John F. Callahan.

Cézanne at the Grand Palais
by Karen Wilkin
On “Cézanne” at the Grand Palais, Paris.

What Gore remembers
by John Simon
On Gore Vidal's memoir Palimpsest.

Modernist spirits: Apollinaire's “Alcools”
by Donald Lyons
On The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology edited, translated and with an introduction by L.C. Breunig, and Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire, translated and with an introduction by Donald Revell.


Poems

Worrying the Muse
by Barry Spacks

Mrs. Donleavy
by Cynthia Zarin

Devon House
by C. Dale Young


Theater

Dwindling dramatically
by Mark Steyn
On “Northeast Local” at Lincoln Center, “New England” at Manhattan Theater Club.


The Media

The very prime of prime time?
by James Bowman
On overstating the dramatic merits of contemporary television.


Dance

The legacy of Mr. B
by Laura Jacobs
On George Balanchine as a teacher and artist.


Music

Pollini plays Beethoven
by James Penrose
On Maurizio Pollini at Carnegie Hall.


Verse Chronicle

Martyrs to language
by William Logan
On Can You Hear Bird by John Ashbery, Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 by Adrienne Rich, Red Sauce, Whiskey, and Snow by August Kleinzahler, The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins, Mother Love by Rita Dove, Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz, and Worldling by Elizabeth Spires.


Books

Misalliance
by Brooke Allen
On the Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw, Vol. 2: Bernard Shaw & H. G. Wells, edited by J. Percy Smith and H. G.: The History of Mr. Wells, by Michael Foot.

Emperor of chemistry
by Paul Gross

Priestesses together
by Robert Richman


Notebook

Seamus Heaney's “middle voice”
by Richard Tillinghast