I am at the Polish Pavilion on the Venice Biennale, an art festival which takes place over the course of six months. The Biennale occurs every two years and attracts international and contemporary artists who wish to showcase their work in art’s global epicenter. This year, it will remain on display until November 22. The central theme binding all the works together, “Making Worlds,” is quite open-ended.
With her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, Moore takes an unexpectedly blunt political turn, eschewing the wit and grace for which she had been appreciated. Moore’s literary odyssey demonstrates that there’s no better way to become a legend than by staying out of the limelight, and no worse way to disappoint than by stepping forward and revealing you have nothing to say.
The art exhibit “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul,” put together by the National Geographic Society and currently touring North America, offers an excellent introduction to that colorful history and a chance to view some extraordinary art.
Bruce Robbins is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. His most recent book is Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State.
How free is democracy? How do raids perpetuate apartheid? Is economic competition the result of an innate human viciousness? The answers to these and other political questions, framed as a series of short essays, allow J.M. Coetzee to expose the fragility and incoherence of strong political opinions in his latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year.
Having directed Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and having served as the Consulting Producer for Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006) and Executive Producer for No End in Sight (2007), Alex Gibney has found a formula to refresh the politico-documentary genre and penetrate Hollywood’s mainstream distribution.
Rendition presents the subject of torture through an aching love story that encourages the viewer to suffer along with the wife of the disappeared, wondering when love will be restored and family made whole.
It may come as quite a shock to most people that if Hitler were alive today and needed a lawyer, he would have no trouble finding one. In fact he would have to look no further than his neighboring country of France, where he could find a well-spoken lawyer with a cigar in his mouth by the name of Jacques [...]
Everybody knows that politicians lie. They mudsling, twist facts, and express regret over things, often claiming that what they “actually meant at the time” was misconstrued. In fact, it is so obvious that the noses of our current leaders are unnaturally long that it is not even cool to talk about it anymore. Bush is a liar, Cheney’s a bigger liar, and Rove’s the biggest, fattest liar of all. Everyone knows it. Everyone accepts it. No one seems to care.
What a Party! My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals by Terry McAuliffe and Steve Kettmann At the beginning of what promises to be a record-breaking fundraising Presidential campaign, an account from a fundraising master has never proved more insightful. In his memoir entitled What a Party! Terry “Mad Dog”McAuliffe details his 25 years [...]
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