Byline: Hal Parker

Escaping Reality

Jean Baudrillard was a poor philosopher and a poorer sociologist. As a writer, he was inconsistent and cracked-out – as much inclined to the output of turgid rivers of prose clotted with effluvial jargon as he was to effervescent plunges … Read More

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Don’t Look Now

A few years ago the song “Fortunate Son” was used in a commercial for Wrangler Jeans. To many this seemed yet another belated obituary for the 60’s, yet another testament to the casual victory of the Establishment. After all, here … Read More

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Old Europe, Astral America

“France is just a country. America is a concept.”
-Jean Baudrillard

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America’s Pastor Problem

The existence of these inflammatory sermons was portrayed as a news-event in itself, but for many Americans the real news should have been this: black people are not happy with America the way you’re happy with America.

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Carrying the Fire

Every now and then there comes a book which is like an arrow shot into the heart of things because it has the power to redeem the fading, diffuse enterprise of bookselling and novel-gazing both, all the misbegotten hours spent … Read More

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C-O-O-K-I-N-G with Rebecca Sealfon

St. Paul once wrote, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” Rebecca Sealfon ’05 probably would have kicked his ass.

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Museum Briefs

1. “Picasso and American Art” (through Jan. 28, 2007) at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Picasso was the greatest artist of the 20th century. Or so I contend. One measure of his greatness, currently on display at the Whitney’s … Read More

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The Polygamist Next Door

It’s like one of those Twilight Zone epiphanies that arrives midway through an episode to thwart the lately begotten hopes and dreams of whatever poor fool thought he caught a lucky break or maybe had a good thing going. So … Read More

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The Vagina Homicides

“Killing the Angel in the House,” wrote Virginia Woolf, “is part of the occupation of a woman writer.” This particular epithet had come to encapsulate the Victorian stereotype of sexual frigidity, otherworldly purity, and picture-perfect domesticity which was the ego-ideal for a century of unhappy women. Joyce Carol Oates has taken Woolf’s literary dictum to the next level: her Angels are not themselves killed; they themselves kill.

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Clean, Well-Lighted Places

It’s fitting that the two floors housing the exhibitions “Picasso and American Art” (reviewed in the issue of October 12) and “Edward Hopper: Highlights from the Collection” are adjacent. These shows typify two different trends of 20th century American art … Read More

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You Want Schmaltz With That?

“Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe,” plead Shylock to the barrister, and indeed what characterizes Jewish history in the main is calamity and tribulation of a scope and cruelty so reckless and undreamt they seem enjoined from another … Read More

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Museum Briefs II

I. “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde” at the Met Investing Vollard with the almost statesmanlike title, “Patron of the Avant-Garde” is pretty generous for someone Paul Gauguin once called “the worst kind of crocodile.” Maecenas he … Read More

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