The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

February 2003 Volume 21, Number 6  

Notes & Comments

Meanwhile, in Britain . . .
On the British Musicians Union proposed ban on Israeli musicians.

. . . and in France
On Chirac's CNN appearance.

Roe v. Wade at 30


Art

Exhibition note
by James Panero
On Wolfgang Tillmans at Busch-Reisinger.


Notes & Comments

The diversity con game
On the affirmative action debate at the University of Michigan.


Features

Why I became a conservative
by Roger Scruton
On the author’s student days in Paris.

What happened to Adolus Huxley
by John Derbyshire
On the completed publication of Huxley’s six-volume collection of essays.

The anatomy of murder
by Theodore Dalrymple
Considering murder in literature and life.

A mild & harmless relativism?
by Scott Campbell
On the recent defense of relativism from the right.


Poems

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
by Daniel Mark Epstein


Theater

Trivial selves, big issues
by Mark Steyn
On Neil Labute's The Mercy Seat.


Art

Richness, quietness, pleasure
by Karen Wilkin
On “Voyage into Myth: French Paintings from Gauguin to Matisse from the Hermitage Museum” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Exhibition note
by James Panero
On “Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art” at the Fogg art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Exhibition note
by Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball on “Park Avenue Cubists” at Grey Art Gallery, New York.


Music

New York chronicle
by Jay Nordlinger
Jay Nordlinger gives a holiday-season wrap-up of Handel's Messiah by the New York Philharmonic, a New Year’s Eve all-Gershwin concert at Avery Fisher, Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites at the Met, Leon Botstein's Bruckner at the Bard Graduate Center, and a reevaluation of the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.


The Media

Confidence motion
by James Bowman
Revisiting the inquisition of Trent Lott.


Books

The scabrous lyricism of Thomas Bernhard
by Eric Ormsby
A review of Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian, by Gitta Honegger.

Horace for our time?
by D.S. Carne-Ross
A review of Horace: The Odes. New Translations by Contemporary Poets, edited by J. D. McClatchy.

Becoming Darwin
by Paul Gross
A review of Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, by Janet Browne.

Beauty blasted
by Alexandra Mullen
A review of Wilfred Owen , by Dominic Hibberd.

My Maso problem
by Ben Downing
A review of Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo, by Carole Maso.