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Contents

June 15, 1978 • Volume 25, Number 10

  • Richard Ellmann

    The Life of Sim Botchit e-edition

    Samuel Beckett: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

  • Conor Cruise O’Brien

    Martyr e-edition

    Biko by Donald Woods

  • John Hollander

    Sphinx e-edition

    Saul Steinberg text by Harold Rosenberg

    Saul Steinberg April 14 - July 9, 1978 an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City

  • Stephen Spender

    Hardy Hardy e-edition

    Thomas Hardy After Fifty Years edited by Lance St John Butler

    Thomas Hardy’s Later Years by Robert Gittings

    Young Thomas Hardy by Robert Gittings

    An Essay on Hardy by John Bayley

    The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy: Volume I, 1840-1892 edited by Richard Little Purdy, edited by Michael Millgate

    Thomas Hardy and the British Tradition by Donald Davie

    The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy edited by James Gibson

  • Garry Wills

    The Party Isn’t Over e-edition

    The Parties: Republicans and Democrats in This Century by Henry Fairlie

  • Francis Haskell

    The Ideal Director e-edition

    Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World by David Robertson

  • Helen Muchnic

    The Undefeated e-edition

    Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin, edited by Aileen Kelly, by Henry Hardy

  • Luigi Barzini

    The Bad Tooth e-edition

    The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume by Michael A. Ledeen

  • Quentin Skinner

    The Flight from Positivism e-edition

    The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory by Richard J. Bernstein

  • Robert Towers

    Forced Marches e-edition

    Airships by Barry Hannah

    Detour by Michael Brodsky

  • Martin Gardner

    The Charms of Catastrophe e-edition

    Structural Stability and Morphogenesis: An Outline of a General Theory of Models by René Thom, translated by D.H. Fowler, with a foreword by C.H. Waddington

    Catastrophe Theory: Selected Papers 1972-1977 by E.C. Zeeman

    Catastrophe Theory by Alexander Woodcock, by Monte Davis

    Catastrophe Theory and Its Applications by Tim Poston, by Ian Stewart

LETTERS

Contributors

J.G.Farrell (1935–1979) was born with a caul, long considered a sign of good fortune. Academically and athletically gifted, Farrell grew up in England and Ireland. In 1956, during his first term at Oxford, he suffered what seemed a minor injury on the rugby pitch. Within days, however, he was diagnosed with polio, which nearly killed him and left him permanently weakened. Farrell’s early novels, which include The Lung and A Girl in the Head, have been overshadowed by his Empire Trilogy—Troubles, the Booker Prize–winning Siege of Krishnapur, and The Singapore Grip (all three are published by NYRB Classics). In early 1979, Farrell bought a farmhouse in Bantry Bay on the Irish coast. “I’ve been trying to write,” he admitted, “but there are so many competing interests–the prime one at the moment is fishing off the rocks… . Then a colony of bees has come to live above my back door and I’m thinking of turning them into my feudal retainers.” On August 11, Farrell was hit by a wave while fishing and was washed out to sea. His body was found a month later. A biography of J.G. Farrell, J.G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacen, was published by Bloomsbury in 1999.

Diane Johnson is a novelist and critic. Her books include Lulu in Marrakechand Le Divorce. Her new book, Flyover Lives, will be published in January 2014.

Alison Lurie is a former Professor of English at Cornell. She is the author of two collections of essays on children’s literature, Don’t Tell the Grownups and Boys and Girls Forever, and the editor of The Oxford Book of Fairy Tales. Her most recent novel is Truth and Consequences.


Jonathan Miller has directed operas and plays throughout the world, most recently Pelléas and Mélisande at the Metropolitan Opera. His many books include The Body in Question, States of Mind, On Reflection, and Nowhere in Particular. The article that appears in this issue is based on a talk given at the New York Public Library. (May 2000)

Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. His many plays include The Caretaker, The Birthday Party, and Moonlight. Please also see haroldpinter.org.

Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, which has served as the setting for many of his novels. He won the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, and for Sabbath’s Theater, the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral, and three PEN/Faulkner awards, for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman.

Richard Ellmann (1918–1987) was an American critic and biographer. He taught at Northwestern, Oxford and Emory, where he was named Robert W. Professor in 1980. He won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joycein 1959; a revised edition was awarded the James Tate Black Memorial Prize in 1982.

Martin Gardner (1914–2010) was a science writer and novelist. He was the author of The New Ambidextrous Universe, Fractal Music, Hypercards and More, The Night is Large and Visitors from Oz.

Francis Haskell (1928-2000) was an English art historian. His works include Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italyand History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past. Haskell taught at Oxford.

John Hollander is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale.

Karl Miller is a British editor and critic. In 1979 he founded the London Review of Books.

Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917–2009) was an Irish historian and politician. He was elected to the Irish parliament in 1969 and served as a Minister from 1973 until 1977. His works include States of Ireland, The Great Melody and Memoir: My Life and Themes.

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) was an English poet and essayist. As a young man, he became friends with W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Christopher Isherwood, a loose collection often referred to as “the Auden Group” or “MacSpaunday.” He published many collections of poems, including The Still Centre and Ruins and Visions, and numerous volumes of nonfiction and other works, including Learning Laughterand Love-Hate Relations.

Quentin Skinner is Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University. His most recent books are Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes and Liberty Before Liberalism. (November 2000)

Robert Towers (1923–1995) was an American critic and novelist. Born in Virginia, Towers was educated at Princeton and served for two years as Vice Counsel at the American Consulate General in Calcutta before dedicating himself to literary studies. He taught English literature and creative writing at Princeton, Queens College and Columbia.

Neal Ascherson is the author of The Struggles for Poland, The Black Sea, and Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.


Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His study of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. His latest book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, was published in February 2013.