The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

June 2001 Volume 19, Number 10  

Notes & Comments

Culture contra ideology


Features

The Museum as Culture Mall
by Hilton Kramer
A trip to the Tate Modern.

“Second city” syndrome
by Francis Morrone
On The Abolition of Britain, by Peter Hitchens, the Tate Modern and other new London buildings.

Rimbaud: sophist of insanity
by Eric Ormsby
Upon the publication of Rimbaud: A Biography, by Graham Robb.

Talking to oneself
by Joseph Epstein
Reflections on keeping a journal upon the publication of The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists.

How to murder a Bolivian boy
by Anthony Daniels
Considering bioethics & Peter Singer upon the publication of Culture of Death: The assualt on Medical Ethics in America by Wesley J. Smith.


Poems

Master knife (one woodblock extant)
by Terri Witek

In the hallway
by Charles Tomlinson

The rain is over
by Charles Tomlinson


Theater

The authentic spirit of Broadway
by Mark Steyn
On The Producers at the St. James Theater.


Art

Vermeer's world
by Karen Wilkin
On “Vermeer & the Delft School” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Exhibition note
by Daniel Kunitz
Daniel Kunitz on “Joel Shapiro on the Roof” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Joel Shapiro: Recent Sculpture and Drawing” at the PaceWildenstein Gallery, New York.

Exhibition note
by Daniel Kunitz
On “Sidney Tillim: Recent Paintings” at the Trans Hudson Gallery, New York.


Music

New York chronicle
by Jay Nordlinger
On Kathleen Battle; Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila; Leos Janácek’s The Markropulos Case; Lang Lang with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuri Temirkanov & Gurrelieder with the Met orchestra and chorus conducted by James Levine.

Berg's femmes fatales
by Alexander Coleman
On Lulu by Alban Berg.

Concert note
by Patrick J. Smith
Patrick J. Smith on The Guarneri String Quartet at Carnegie Hall.


The Media

Melancholy facts
by James Bowman
Comparing the obituaries of WWII veterans in American and English newspapers.


Verse Chronicle

Folk Tales
by William Logan
A review of Seven Ages, by Louise Glück; The Beauty of the Husband, by Anne Carson; The Beforelife, by Franz Wright; The Darkness and the Light, by Anthony Hecht; Different Hours, by Stephen Dunn; The Tether, by Karl Phillips & Electric Light, by Seamus Heaney.


Books

Reconciling nature & the machine
by Mildred F. Schmertz
A review of Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind, by Michael J. Lewis.

Induction rules
by John Derbyshire
A review of The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, by James Franklin.

Trail of blood
by Jeffrey Meyers
A review of The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski.


Notebook

"The grisly science of embryo cloning"
by Jenny Teichman