The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

December 2002 Volume 21, Number 4  

Notes & Comments

Tenured adolescents
On “the adversary culture of the intellectuals” & Prof. Peter N. Kirstein.

Meanwhile, at Cornell . . .
On the university’s health service debating whether to sell vibrators in its dispensary.


Features

Starting out
by Alex Katz

Does abstract art have a future?
by Hilton Kramer

The art of collecting
by E.V. Thaw

Art history, Oxford style
by Michael J. Lewis
On the iconoclastic Oxford History of Art.

Architecture & ideology
by Roger Kimball

Bonnard's butterflies
by James Panero

Adolph Gottlieb
by Karen Wilkin

The writings of Henry Moore
by Eric Gibson


Poems

Teaching poetry at the school for the blind
by Chelsea Rathburn

Love song
by Chelsea Rathburn

Unused lines
by Chelsea Rathburn


Theater

No vital sparks
by Mark Steyn
On A Man of No Importance & Flower Drum Song.


Dance

Fight club
by Laura Jacobs
On Movin’ Out, by Twyla Tharp.


Art

Gallery chronicle
by Daniel Kunitz
On Robert Ryman: New Paintings at PaceWildenstein; Elmer Bischoff: Paintings, at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries; Paul Resika: Paintings, at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries & Jeff Wall: New Work at Marian Goodman Gallery.

Exhibition note
by Mario Naves
On Masterpieces of European Painting from the Toledo Museum of Art, at The Frick Collection.


Music

New York chronicle
by Jay Nordlinger
On Anne-Sophie Mutter, Guarneri String Quartet, David Shifrin, Josc van Dam & Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust.


The Media

They still don't get it
by James Bowman
On the best efforts of our most accomplished stylists and cultivators of extravagant metaphors.


Verse Chronicle

The real language of men
by William Logan
Reviews of Book of My Nights, by Li-Young Lee; Now the Green Blade Rises, by Elizabeth Spires; Source, by Mark Doty; Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, by B. H. Fairchild; The Nerve, by Glyn Maxwell; Moy Sand and Gravel, by Paul Muldoon.


Books

The lessons of Wellington
by Victor Davis Hanson
A review of Wellington: A Military Life, by Gordon Corrigan & Napoleon & Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo and the Great Commanders Who Fought It, by Andrew Roberts.

What went wrong?
by Mark Bauerlein
A review of Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose, by B. R. Myers.

Beyond morality
by Paul Dean
A review of Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life, by Constance Brown Kuriyama.

Honor wagered
by John J. Miller
A review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation, by W. S. Merwin.

Flamboyantly humble
by Max Watman
A review of You Shall Know Our Velocity, by Dave Eggers.