Archive
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Articles
Rooted Cosmopolitan
In 2011, I reviewed what was then Adam Zagajewski’s recent collection, Unseen Hand. In it, the poet, then in his mid-sixties, turned toward themes of life and death, loss and...
The Church’s Future Beauty
Institutions populated by humans are flawed, filthy things, whether families, corporations, universities, or dioceses. The sibilant hiss of that last word stings on the tip of the tongue just...
Bodily Revulsions
The Meaning of Disgust by Colin McGinn Oxford, 264 pages, $35 n The eminent philosopher Colin McGinn has written twenty-five or so sharp, illuminating pages on the topic of...
The Tree of Life and Melancholia
I crawled into bed last night just before 12, shaken and very quiet. I had just returned from seeing Lars von Trier’s new film Melancholia . Many readers of...
Generation iPod and the Ends of Occupy Wall Street
“I am an anarchist – don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.” So brayed Johnny Rotten, singer of the seminal punk band the SexPistols....
The Virtues of Trilling
This will not be the first time that First Thoughts readers have heard from me on the virtues of Mr. Lionel Trilling , but readers interested in learning more...
The Heavy Eyelids of Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud set himself apart. For several decades, until his death this past July, the English painter stuck stubbornly to his program of stark, severe portraiture, ignoring the many...
Is Rick Perry a Higher-Education Visionary?
The New Republic has a piece up today that, gulp, commends the higher-education reform agenda of one Mr. Rick Perry of Texas. Perry is, the writer avers, a visionary....
The Verdict on Verdicts
The folks over at Commonweal are up to something. In case you don’t make it to that corner of the web very often, let me commend to your attention...
Patriotism, Little Platoons, and the “Real” America
Primary season is fully upon us, and now the Fourth of July is here. Seasoned political observers know what to expect from the candidates—a dozen or so very ambitious...
Elements From Opposing Minds
I have just finished reading Lionel Trilling’s 1940 Partisan Review essay “Elements That Are Wanted.” More than sixty years after its publication, it remains a galvanizing read, though perhaps...
Democracy Comes for the Journalists
As usual, the nineteenth century saw this coming. Tocqueville and Nietzsche, among many others, long ago predicted that an advanced democratic culture would entail a flattening of the spiritual...
On the Banality of Abortion as Art
Yale senior Aliza Shvarts has gone too far¯or maybe she hasn’t. According to a press release that Shvarts sent to the Yale Daily News on Wednesday, April 16, over...
