Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century had no sure prospect of resting in peace after death. If their bodies weren’t embalmed for public viewing or dug up for medical dissection, their bones were liable to be displayed in a museum. In some cases, their skin was used as book covers by bibliophiles and surgeons with a taste for human-hide binding. The preservation, exhumation, and exhibition of human remains become, in the hands of the literary critic Lindsay Tuggle, an illuminating basis for a provocative reassessment of America’s foremost poet, Walt Whitman.
Books
Caesar Bloody Caesar
When Julius Caesar was thirty-one years old in 69 BCE, so the story goes, and serving as a junior Roman magistrate in Spain, he once stood lamenting before a statue of Alexander the Great because he had achieved so little at an age by which Alexander had already conquered the world. He had good reason for concern.
A New Lease of Life for Kettle’s Yard Gallery
Kettle’s Yard, four old slum cottages, tucked away behind St. Peter’s Church in Cambridge (named after the Kettle family, who had built a short-lived theatre on the site back in the 1700s), became the location of Ede’s experimental vision. He renovated them and unpacked his collection, around which he and his wife, Helen, set up home, thenceforth holding an “open house” every afternoon during the university term, when students were encouraged to drop by, admire the art, read the Edes’ books—and, if lucky enough to be invited, perhaps partake of a cup of tea and a slice of toast with marmalade. Part of the charm of Kettle’s Yard has always been the juxtaposition between old and new.
The Art of Love
Why art? What is it? What is it for? These are the questions that have vexed scholars and historians, makers of art and lovers of art, since the beginning of civilization. What color is art? Can beautiful art be ugly, can ugly art be beautiful? Does art distort life, mirror it, or duplicate it? Does art have a taste? In Why Art? we are guided through a metaphysical journey where the mysterious and regenerative properties of art are put to the test.
The Threats, Real and Imagined, of Mexico’s Election
In less than five months, Mexico will have a presidential election that is being described by US and international media commentators as a perilous undertaking. The problem, according to the pundits and the Trump administration, is that the leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador holds a sizable lead in the polls, and could well be Mexico’s next president. But is his possible election really such a threat? It is difficult to say how much he could do if elected, given the forces arrayed against him, both at home and from the north. But if there is a reform candidate and party in the race, it is López Obrador and his Morena party.
In the Review Archives: 1963–1965
Fifty-five years ago, The New York Review published its first issue. To celebrate the magazine’s emerald anniversary, in 2018 we will be going through the archives year by year, featuring some of the notable, important, and sometimes forgotten pieces that appeared in its pages. That first issue included a short note, addressed To the Reader: “The hope of the editors,” they wrote, “is to suggest, however imperfectly, some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discover whether there is, in America, not only the need for such a review but the demand for one.”
The Death and Life of a Great American Building
I am one of the last tenants of the St. Denis, a 165-year-old building on East 11th Street, just south of Union Square in New York City, that is in the process of being emptied and readied for gutting. For decades, the St. Denis has been a haven for psychotherapists of every sort, but a seismic shift is taking place and the therapist buildings are getting squeezed. Imagine a future Manhattan without shrinks. What will happen to the psyche of that city?
A Flag Is a Flag Is a Flag
A good mythology needs a Genesis story. For Jasper Johns, the dawn of creation came in the late fall of 1954, and was instigated not by divine revelation but something close to it: a vision in a dream. A year out of the army, asleep in a loft in lower Manhattan, Johns closed his eyes and saw the Stars and Stripes in the dark, not fluttering, not flying over a battlefield, but on an easel—and he was there, too, painting it. It’s hard enough to remember a dream the next morning, let alone decades on, and Johns recounted his vision of himself painting a flag with slight variations in the decades that followed: he may or may not have told Robert Rauschenberg about it over breakfast. But the next day he was at work, and by the spring of 1955, he had completed the painting he had seen in his vision.
Today’s Eerie Echoes of the Civil War
Beneath the weight of American history, it is little wonder that today’s struggles over the status of Confederate monuments and political demonstrations by avowed white supremacists evoke anxieties about disunion. We would do well to pay heed to the old enmities bubbling up in our politics: it is not that we are on the verge of another civil war, but that the Civil War never truly ended. With the exception of slavery itself, what divided the United States then divides us still today.
Dereliction of Duty?
H.R. McMaster was known for speaking truth to power, and he appeared to have the organizational skills and command bearing befitting a three-star general. His unblinking academic criticism of national security officials reflected a conviction that officers were obliged to avoid repeating the mistakes of their predecessors, even if it meant challenging their superiors. One year ago, the optimistic view—I held it, as did others—was that McMaster would stand up to Trump. Yet as national security adviser, he has channeled Trump’s “Make America Great Again” jingoism.
Sig Nordal 