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Contents

November 8, 1990 • Volume 37, Number 17

LETTERS

Contributors

Larry McMurtry lives in Archer City, Texas. His novels include The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove (winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), Folly and Gloryand Rhino Ranch. His nonfiction works include a biography of Crazy Horse, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, Paradise, Sacagawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West and, most recently, Custer.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Grace Paley is a writer and a teacher, a feminist and an activist. Her books include The Collected Stories; Just as I Thought, which gathers personal and political essays and articles; and Begin Again: Collected Poems. She lives in New York City and Vermont.

Gabriele Annan is a book and film critic living in London. (March 2006)

John Bayley is a critic and novelist. His books include Elegy for Iris and The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature.

Charles Rosen is a pianist and music critic. In 2011 he was awarded a National Humanities Medal.

Felix Rohatyn is an investment banker and has been a governor of the New York Stock Exchange, Chairman of the New York Municipal Assistance Corporation, and US Ambassador to France. (October 2008)

Shaul Bakhash is Robinson Professor of History at George Mason University and the author of The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution. (September 2005)

James Fallows is National Correspondent for The Atlantic.His books include Free Flight: Inventing the Future of Travel, Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq, and China Airborne.

John Updike (1932–2009) was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. In 1954 he began to publish in The New Yorker, where he continued to contribute short stories, poems, and criticism until his death. His major work was the set of four novels chronicling the life of Harry “Rabbit: Angstrom, he two of which, Rabbit is Richand Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His last books were the novel The Widows of Eastwick and Due Considerations, a collection of his essays and criticism.

Bernard Williams is Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His most recent book is Making Sense of Humanity. The article in this issue is a revised version of the Orr Lecture given in the Music Faculty of Cambridge University, May 2000. An earlier draft was given at the Nexus Institute, Tilburg, Holland. (November 2000)

István Deák is Seth Low Professor Emeritus at Columbia. He is the author, with Jan Gross and Tony Judt, of The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath.

Jonathan Mirsky, a journalist and historian of China, is the former East Asia Editor of The Times of London.
 (May 2013)

David J. Rothman is Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine and History at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and president of the Institute on Medicine as a Professor.

Sheila M. Rothman is Professor of Public Health at the Mailman School, Columbia University. Their books written together include The Willowbrook Wars: A Decade of Struggle for Social Justice (1984) and The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement (2003).

Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) was an anthropologist. Widely recognized as the most influential American anthropologist of the twentieth century, Geertz championed the role of symbols in the creation and interpretation of social meaning. His many books include Peddlers and Princes: Social Development and Economic Change in Two Indonesian Towns and Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics.

C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a historian of the American South. He taught at Johns Hopkins and at Yale, where he was named the Sterling Professor of History. His books include Mary Chesnut’s Civil War and The Old World’s New World.

Lord Zuckerman (1904–1993) was a British zoologist and military strategist. Having advised the Allies on bombing strategy during World War II, he spent much of his later life campaigning for nuclear non-proliferation. Zuckerman was knighted in 1956 and made a life peer in 1971.