In his new book, Blind Trust, psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan offers starkly different terms for what he sees as a troubling “societal regression.” Volkan looks at bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the Bush administration and sees id, ego, and supe...
In a letter of December 1910, the young T. E. Lawrence defined civilization as “the power of appreciating the character and achievements of peoples in a different stage than ourselves.” No Englishman had a greater understanding of the past...
Last year, two days after Christmas and around three that afternoon, I passed out in the foyer of my home in Montclair, New Jersey. I hadn’t even had a drink, and I considered that fact, lying there on the hardwood floor, staring up, coming...
Two pairs of shoes still in their boxes: a pair of clean new Hongmahwang loafers and a pair of gilded, tacky Italian slippers. The footwear of a madman caught last December hiding in a rat-filled hole almost within sight of one of his many...
The poems I have chosen to memorize over the years answer to an odd mixture of social occasions and opportunities. When asked to perform a poem at nonacademic parties, I have found Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” not among the poems Harold...
Cursing, I slam down the receiver and run out of the house, shout for Bro. He stands by his car still parked on the street. Arms folded, he turns to me, a stocky young man with black hair and a heavy mustache. He wears a leather jacket and...
What redeems literary anthologists, if we’re able to claim neither the creativity of the poet nor the analytic rigor of the cultural theorist? Having dedicated myself for years to constructing elaborate critical arguments, how did I get...
Visitors fortunate enough to have seen “The Moon Has No Home” were introduced to a striking new perspective on an art form that has enthralled interested viewers since the 1854 opening of Japan to the West. The show’s very title hints at...
