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Contents

December 6, 1979 • Volume 26, Number 19

LETTERS

Contributors

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.


Nigel Dennis (1912–1989) was an English writer, critic and editor. His books include Boys and Girls Come Out to Play and An Essay on Malta.

Irving Howe (1920–1993) was an American literary and social critic. His history of Eastern-European Jews in America, World of Our Fathers, won the 1977 National Book Award in History.

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.

James Merrill (1926–1995) was an American poet whose major work The Changing Light at Sandover describes a series of spirit communications conducted over many years. He won the National Book Award from his collections Nights and Days and Mirabell: Books of Number.

Darryl Pinckney is the author of a novel, High Cotton, and, in the Alain Locke Lecture Series, Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature.

Stanley Hoffmann is Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard. His most recent books are Chaos and Violence: What Globalization, Failed States, and Terrorism Mean for US Foreign Policy and Rousseau and Freedom, coedited with Christie McDonald.


John Carey is Arts Emeritus Merton Professor of English at Oxford University. He has appeared as a host and commentator on numerous television and radio programs in England and is the former chief book reviewer for The Sunday Times. Among his books are The Intellectuals and the Masses, What Good Are the Arts?, Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the Twenieth Century’s Most Enjoyable Books, and a biography of William Golding. He has chaired the Booker Prize committee twice and in 2005 was the chair of the first international Booker Prize committee.

E.L. Doctorow is the author most recently of All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories, which appeared last year. His essay in this issue will appear in different form as the introduction to a new edition of As I Lay Dying, to be published by Modern Library in May.
 (May 2012)

Frances FitzGerald’s books include Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War. (November 2008)

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) was a poet and one of most prominent figures of the Beat Generation. His epic poem “Howl,” which denounced bourgeois conformity and capitalistic greed, became the subject of a landmark obscenity trial in San Francisco. Known for his celebration of the marginalized and the downtrodden and his opposition to American militarism, Ginsberg drew inspiration from the long lines and anaphoric rhythms of Walt Whitman. His 1981 collection Plutonium Ode won the National Book Award; in 1993 Ginsberg was awarded the medal of Chevalier Des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

Jeri Laber, Senior Advisor to Human Rights Watch, was formerly executive director of its Helsinki division. She is the author, with Barnett R. Rubin, of ‘A Nation is Dying’: Afghanistan Under the Soviets, 1979—1987. (January 1997)

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) was an American playwright and essayist. His 1949 play, Death of A Salesman, received a Tony Award for Best Author, The New York Drama Circle Critics’ Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Toni Morrison, Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton, is the author of seven novels. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. (August 2001)

Aryeh Neier, former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, is President of the Open Society Institute. He is the author of Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights.

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.

Orville Schell is the former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and currently the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on US–China Relations at the Asia Society in New York City. (May 2010)

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was a novelist, playwright, filmmaker, and one of the most influential critics of her generation. Her books include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and The Volcano Lover.

Rose B. Styron is a poet, journalist and human rights activist. She is the author of By Vineyard Light, a collection of poems centered on Martha’s Vineyard, where she and her husband, writer William Styron, spent extended summers. Her other books include From Summer to Summer, Thieves’ Afternoon and Modern Russian Poetry.

William Styron (1925–2006) was the author of several novels, including Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner.

Robert Penn Warren (1936–2011) was an American novelist, poet and critic. From 1944 until 1945 he served as Consultant in Poetry—the position would later become Poet Laureate—to the Library of Congress.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007) was an American historian and social critic. He served as adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. His Journals: 1952– 2000 were published in 2007.