The landscape of Pandora in James Cameron's film Avatar (ILM/TM/20th Century Fox/Everett Collection)
The Wizard Daniel Mendelsohn
On Avatar, a film directed by James Cameron.
At the Tea Party Jonathan Raban
I went to Nashville not as an accredited reporter but as a recently joined member of Tea Party Nation. I had my own quarrels with big government, especially on the matter of mass surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, and the rest, and I counted on my libertarian streak to give me sufficient common ground with my fellow tea partiers. When I presented my Washington State driver's license at the registration desk, the volunteer said, "Thank you for coming all this way to help save our country," then, looking at the license more closely, "Seattle—you got a lot of liberals there." I accepted his condolences.
Gogol Haunts the New Ukraine Timothy Snyder
In Gogol's "The Overcoat" a humble and honest man scrimps and saves to buy a warm fur coat, which is then promptly stolen, leaving him to fall ill and die. Victor Yanukovych, who was elected president of Ukraine on February 7, once stole coats, and once stole votes. Though now he buys ostrich-leather shoes and wins elections, he knows what poverty and corruption mean. There is a chance, even if a small one, that Yanukovych will use his contacts with business, and the particular advantages of his working-class upbringing, to address the basic problem that keeps Ukrainians in frustration and poverty: the absence of the rule of law.
Fly High & Fall Benedetta Craveri
On The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon by Veronica Buckley.
The Anger of Exile Colm Tóibín
In two recent novels, both written in English, two novelists from Lebanon now living in North America offer a dramatization of exile: they allow the drama to occur emphatically and deeply within the self and the senses, in the mysterious caverns of consciousness, as much as in the society abandoned or in the place of refuge or return. They offer a poetics of exile while keeping its politics sharply within their sights.
How They Killed the Economy Roger E. Alcaly
On Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis by John B. Taylor.
Plus: Thomas Nagel on Peter Singer, Tony Judt on being on the edge, Joshua Hammer on Avigdor Lieberman, Michael Greenberg on J.D. Salinger, Alison Lurie on Cathleen Schine's Three Weissmanns of Westport, and more.
