Retaking the university: a battle plan
by Roger Kimball
On some measures for restoring the American university to its founding principles.
Features
Who needs “a new history of German literature”?
by Daniel Johnson
On the offerings and merits of A New History of German Literature, edited by David Wellbery.
Sideshadows: The determination of free will
by Gary Saul Morson
On the complexities of the human experience.
Patrick O’Brian’s naval mastery
by Robert Messenger
Robert Messenger takes stock of a remarkable literary achievement with W. W. Norton’s release of Patrick O’Brian’s Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels including the unfinished twenty-first.
Most popular
Theater
Extinct Parodies
by Mark Steyn
On Spamalot, Broadway’s new “loving rip-off” of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
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Art
Not-so-great New York 2005
by Karen Wilkin
On “Greater New York 2005” at P.S. 1, Queens, New York.
Gallery chronicle
by James Panero
On “Adrienne Farb” at Mary Ryan Gallery; “Graham Nickson: Painting” at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries; “Wayne Thiebaud Since 1962: A Survey” at the Allan Stone Gallery & “Thornton Willis & James Little: Raising the Bar” at Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn.
Music
New York chronicle
by Jay Nordlinger
On Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; the New York Philharmonic’s program of Bach and Messiaen, guest-conducted by Kent Nagano; Handel’s Orlando and Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West at City Opera; the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Postcard from Prague” program at Carnegie Hall; two Schubert concerts at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Valery Gergiev at Carnegie Hall.
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The media
Marketplace morality
by James Bowman
On on the media’s strange responses to the death and legacy of Pope John Paul II.
Fiction chronicle
Ignorant armies clash by night
by Max Watman
A review of Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro; A Changed Man, by Francine Prose; American Purgatorio, by John Haskell; Saturday, by Ian McEwan; & Winslow in Love, by Kevin Canty.
Books
The jewel in the cobra’s mouth
by Eric Ormsby
A review of The Clay Sanskrit Library, co-published by New York University Press.
Ambiguous type
by Paul Dean
A review of William Empson, Volume I: Among the Mandarins, by John Haffenden.
Infinitely abysmal
by Stephen Schwartz
A review of Tales, by H. P. Lovecraft.
Reticent achievement
by David Pryce-Jones
A review of Quicksands: A Memoir, by Sybille Bedford.
On the waterfront
by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Boy George
by Tess Lewis
A review of George Sand by Elizabeth Harlan.
A long and happy life
by Algis Valiunas
A review of V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life, by Jeremy Treglown.
Miss Pym disposes
by Alexandra Mullen
A review of No Soft Incense: Barbara Pym and the Church, by Barbara Pym, edited by Hazel K. Bell.
The royal sea
by William Anthony Hay
A review of Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815, by N. A. M. Rodger.
The elfin mind
by Stefan Beck
A review of Hans Christian Andersen: A New Life, by Jens Andersen, translated by Tiina Nunnally.
Shorter notice
by James Panero
A review of “Christopher Wilmarth: Light & Gravity” by Steven Henry Madoff.
Notebook
An imaginary “scandal”
by Theodore Dalrymple
On literary scandals real and trumped up.
Notes & Comments
The virtues of a Cambridge history
by The Editors
On the woeful failure of the new Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature.
“Une puissance musulmane”?
by The Editors
A note on David Pryce-Jones’s contribution to the May issue of Commentary magazine.
Unheralded genius?
by The Editors
On the recent death of the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin.