The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

September 2011 Volume 30, Number 1  

Notes & Comments

The New Criterion at 30
Announcing our anniversary season.

The Hamilton follies, cont'd
On the ivory sepulcher.


Features

America resumed: 9/11 remembered
by Michael J. Lewis
The first entry in our series "Future tense: the lessons of culture in an age of upheaval."

Beauty locked out
by Alexander McCall Smith
On the role of the positive in fiction.

What's wrong with our universities?
by James Piereson
On the ailing state of higher education.

G. K. Chesterton: master of rejuvenation
by Roger Kimball
On the vitality of the Jolly Journalist's work.

The bright ghosts of antiquity
by John Talbot
On the enduring legacy of the Loeb Library.

Stephen Crane's strange singing
by Michael Dirda
On the poetry of Stephen Crane.

The ruler of law
by Andrew C. McCarthy
On “justice” in the age of Obama.

Pound notes
by Denis Donoghue
On Ezra Pound's correspondence with his parents.

Blunder at the Biennale
by James Panero
On the Department of State's diplomatic flop at the Venice Biennale.

The pious provincial
by Marco Grassi
On the sublime artistry of Lorenzo Lotto.

Crooked lines
by Eric Ormsby
On Paul Claudel's lasting influence in French letters.

These are the poems, folks
by David Yezzi
On the relationship between poetry and joke-telling.


Poems

From Odi Barbare
by Geoffrey Hill

From Odi Barbare
by Geoffrey Hill

Snowman argument
by Wilmer Mills


Letter from Provence

Points of View
by Anthony Daniels
Reconsidering the power of photography.


Manners & morals

The past is a foreign country
by David Pryce-Jones
On the politicization of historiography.


Theater

Shakespeare in the dark
by Kevin D. Williamson
On the RSC's Romeo and Juliet, Sleep No More & Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.


Web Special

The Steins & Cones collect
by Karen Wilkin
On “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” & “Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore.”


Art

Exhibition note
by Christie Davies
On "The Vorticists" at Tate Britain.

Exhibition note
by Leann Davis Alspaugh
On "Kurt Schwitters: Color & Collage" at Houston's Menil Collection.

Exhibition note
by Alexander Nazaryan
On "The American Style: Colonial Revival & the Modern Metropolis" at the Museum of the City of New York.

Exhibition note
by James Panero
On "Simon Dinnerstein: The Fulbright Triptych & Selected Works” at The German Consulate General, New York.


Music

“Musical love letters to God”
by Jay Nordlinger
On Bruckner & the Lincoln Center Festival.


The Media

The incivility of civility
by James Bowman
On the intellectual vanity of our public culture.


Books

Complexe, mais pas compliqué
by James Penrose

Demographic dilemmas
by John Derbyshire

Nature's nationalists
by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

At long last love
by Emily Esfahani Smith

Grim countenances
by Daniel J. Mahoney

True minds
by James Como

A failure to communicate
by Jeffrey Greggs


Notebook

The last of a magical breed
by David Mason
I.M. Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1915–2011.