The Editors: On Peter W. Galbraith
Volume 56, Number 19 · December 3, 2009
Axler's Theater
by Elaine Blair
A lesbian deciding to have an affair with a man—the premise would seem to offer Philip Roth some good opportunities to needle and offend, evoking as it does the politically thorny question of the mutability of sexual desire, not to mention a leitmotif of straight male porn. But The Humbling has little satirical energy, for there seems to be nothing in the world that its hero, Simon Axler, scorns or reviles.
In Evin Prison
by Claire Messud
To appreciate that a faction of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry seriously believes that the Open Society Institute is intent on a velvet revolution in Iran is already to grasp the strange, novelistic, mutual incomprehensions that exist between Iran and the United States. Suddenly, with Haleh Esfandiari's new book, Tehran's apparently lunatic assertions about Western involvement in the events of June of this year take on a new tenor: it is vital that we understand that this is not mere rhetorical flourish.
- NYRblog: Haleh Esfandiari: Iran's Show Trials
Who Are the Blue Dogs?
by Michael Tomasky
With its gains in the 2008 election, the Democratic congressional party has become far more ideologically diverse than the Republican one. In theory, and sometimes in practice, this can be a good thing. But it also means that Democrats simply can't act with the kind of unanimity one sees among Republicans. There is too much disagreement within the caucus. One faction, particularly vocal in recent months, is the Blue Dog Coalition, who say they stand for moderate and even conservative principles. And it's when the big issues take center stage that the Blue Dogs bark.
With Berlusconi in the Soup
by Ingrid D. Rowland
It is a measure of the ineptitude—or is it a death wish?—of Italy's major opposition party, the Partito Democratico, that it has spent the entire season of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's discontent wrangling over the election of its own party secretary, only to be caught, on the eve of the October 25 vote, by a veritable Vesuvius of erupting bimbos.
- NYRblog: Stephen Greenblatt: Berlusconi's Reversal
Light on the Dark Side
by Paula Fox
I remember L.J. Davis as an energetic, voluble man whose interests (and writing) were not at all confined to the literary. He knew a lot about all sorts of things, one of which was finance. His impersonal way of greeting you was to announce without preliminary some remarkable, usually grotesque piece of local news or information.
Velvet Revolution: The Prospects
by Timothy Garton Ash
My purpose is to sketch out a hypothesis that 1989 established a new model of nonviolent revolution that now often supplants, or at least competes with, the older, violent model we associate with 1789. 1989 established the model, in the sense that, being such a giant, world-changing event or set of events, it became the major historical reference point for this kind of change; and there does seem to have been a lot more new-style revolution around since 1989, and less of the old-fashioned kind.
Israel & Palestine: Can They Start Over?
by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley
The problem with the two-state solution as it has been construed is that it promises to close a conflict that began in 1948, perhaps earlier, yet virtually everything it worries about sprang from the 1967 war. Failure to deal with basic issues has guaranteed their reemergence whenever the parties inch closer to a deal. Some will deduce from this that little can be done. But there are plausible departures from the conventional model that involve neither a flight of fancy into a one-state universe nor resigned submission to the status quo. The alternative is continuing a process that has consistently failed.
- Obama and the Middle East (June 11, 2009)
Plus: Harold Bloom on R. Crumb's Book of Genesis, Joyce Carol Oates on Alice Munro, Walter Kaiser on saving Florence, Brad Leithauser on Lorrie Moore, and more.
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