The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

November 2008 Volume 27, Number 3  

Notes & Comments

Sun set
On the close of The New York Sun.

The New Criterion awards
On the second New Criterion benefit art auction.


Features

Nothing succeeds like failure
by Joseph Epstein
On Cyril Connolly and "promise."

A common what?: the limits of reconciliation
by Sarah Ruden
On the Christian-Muslim "A Common Word Between Us and You" at Yale.

Herodotus's wheel
by Barry Strauss
On Robert Strassler's The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories.

Prokofiev abroad
by John Simon
On the diaries of Sergey Prokofiev.


Poems

A math grad
by Dan Brown

A democratic vista
by Daniel Hoffman


Fiction Chronicle

Beside the golden door
by Stefan Beck
On All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen, A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Home by Marilynne Robinson, and Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.


Theater

The best & worst of times
by Brooke Allen
On A Tale of Two Cities at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 13 at the Jacobs Theatre, Equus at the Broadhurst Theatre.


Art

Van Gogh at MOMA
by Karen Wilkin
On "Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Exhibition note
by Leann Davis Alspaugh
On "Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871-1958" at the McMullen Museum, Boston College.

Exhibition note
by Anthony Daniels
On "Black Is Beautiful" at De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam.


Music

New York chronicle
by Jay Nordlinger
On the opening of the season of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.


The Media

Carefully crafted narratives
by James Bowman
On the continuing reappearance of the "end of capitalism" idea.


Books

The house in his mind
by Eric Ormsby
On the collected novels and stories of William Maxwell.

The anti-historian
by David Pryce-Jones
On The Decline & Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon.

The houses Pugin built
by Roger Sandall
On God's Architect: Pugin & the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill.

Small acts of disdain
by Theodore Dalrymple
On Mrs. Woolf & the Servants: An Intimate History of Bloomsbury by Alison Light.

The price we pay
by Martin Gardner
On God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman.

Faking it
by Marco Grassi
On The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren by Jonathan Lopez.

Tapping them veins
by Colin Fleming
On The Golden Volcano by Jules Verne.

The black holes of BHL
by James Bowman
On the “War, Evil, and America Now" symposium at Skidmore College.