Conrad’s sea change

By Michael Gorra in TLS
You don’t hear very much about gout any more. None of the meat-eating drinkers I know seems to suffer from it, you don’t read about it in the papers, and, unlike consumption or the pox, it doesn’t now appear under another name. You might almost think it vanished along with the [...]

Alfred Kazin

For more than 50 years Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was one of the best known critics in America. In 1934, at the age of 19, he started reviewing for the New Republic (under the literary editorship of Malcolm Cowley). In 1942, at only 27, Kazin published a masterly study of American literature, On Native Grounds. During [...]

Why Is Bach Ignored?

Bach is sometimes referred to as the father of Western music, not to suggest that there was nothing of substance before him (he didn’t spring full grown from the head of Zeus) but that the music after him has been profoundly influenced and shaped by his models. And surely the influences have been radical and [...]

He Was Nouveau When It Was New

THESE days, the name Robbe-Grillet doesn’t ring many bells. A new chateau perhaps, whose grand cru goes well with meat? A deputy minister in Sarkozy’s government? An up-and-coming couturier?
How times have changed. Starting in the 1950s, the novelist, filmmaker and literary theorist Alain Robbe-Grillet, who died last week at 85, had a profound impact on [...]

Brian De Palma: ‘Apparently, I’m a left-wing wacko traitor who should be horsewhipped’

Brian De Palma is facing another rough passage. In a career of storms and tempests, his latest film, Redacted, a multi- format examination of US soldiers’ savage behaviour in Iraq, has inevitably not proved popular back home. “In America, you cannot criticise the troops,” he says. “So now it’s all over the web that I’m [...]

Balkan warrior

During the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Dubravka Ugresic was denounced, she says, as “a whore, a witch and a traitor”. A reluctant citizen of newly independent Croatia, she took a stand against nationalism “and all its perversities”, and like many people became a target. As the Balkan wars escalated, she found herself the [...]

Ancient Afghan treasures on exhibit in Amsterdam

An exhibition in the Netherlands showcasing the rich history of ancient Afghanistan, gives visitors a picture of a country that is both entirely different yet also strikingly similar to the conflict-ridden country it is today. Hidden Afghanistan, which is on at the Nieuwe Kerk in central Amsterdam’s Dam Square, contains a collection of some 250 [...]

In search of the perfect Hamlet

Who is the best Hamlet you’ve seen? Watch classic versions of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy by Laurence Olivier, 1948 I Derek Jacobi, 1980 I Kevin Kline, 1990 I Kenneth Branagh, 1996 I Ethan Hawke, 2000At last count I’d seen 40 Hamlets, beginning with Richard Burton, of whom my boyhood memory is simply that he scowled and [...]

The Philadelphia Museum of Art Presents Today Frida Kahlo

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will be the only East Coast venue for the first major exhibition in 15 years to be devoted to Frida Kahlo in the United States. Frida Kahlo (February 20-May 18, 2008) examines the art of one of the most influential artists of the last 50 years. The exhibition includes more [...]

Legendary Soviet-era prima ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova dies

The Russian prima ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova, a leading star of the Bolshoi Theatre for three decades, has died aged 66 after a long illness, the company said on Tuesday.”She died in a Moscow hospital after a long and difficult illness,” the Bolshoi press service was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti news agency.Born in [...]