by Harvey Blume Ex-Catholic nun Karen Armstrong has, in her long, productive second career as scholar, written 21 books, including A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and engaging, balanced biographies of Buddha and Muhammed. I interviewed her about the Buddha biography when it came out in 2001 and enjoyed […]
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Short Fuse: Finally, Doris Lessing Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
Doris Lessing has always been massively and productively incorrect, and splendidly fulfills the mandate of a great writer by being so.
Arts Commentary: “The Boston Globe” Has Nothing to Worry About …
Who cares how the chairs are arranged or even who sits on them on the deck of the Titanic-“Globe”? As the popularity of online publications and blogs grows, the “Globe”’s tepid cultural coverage has become increasingly superfluous.
Theater Review: Geriatric Espionage
by Bill Marx The schizophrenia is instructive if somewhat dizzying. At the Calderwood Pavilion, the Huntington Theatre Company kicks off its season with “The Atheist,” a cynical exercise in scatological anti-heroism about a sleazy reporter who blackmails his way to fame. On its main stage at the Boston University Theater the HTC wallows in PG […]
A Pint-Sized Heart of Darkness
Machiavellian monsters aren’t what they used to be in the theater. The gloriously godless creeps that memorably rampage their way through the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Shaw and Brecht scale the dizzying heights of inhuman ambition and self-admiration. The closest contemporary American theater comes to that kind of mountain-sized ego is Roy Cohn in Angels […]
The Fine Art of Packaging Beer
By David Hartley Believe it or not, cans and screwtops are not only back, but they are chic. For the past few decades, drinking beer out of a can has been for the slightly louche among us, the thin tin package of choice for undiscriminating guzzlers at football stadiums and frat-houses. But now the lowly […]
The Art of Being Eternally Hillary
The NY Times is running a series of articles about front-runners for the presidency. I’ve read the two about Hillary Clinton carefully, because I’m stuck about her. She’s someone I’d like to feel enthusiastic about but can’t. She always, to my mind, testifies strongly at first, then cancels herself out. She’s an enigma wrapped inside […]
Being Where?
Some of the best moments of my visit to documenta XII I spent in bed. Even though Loekie and I had decided this time not to try to see everything and to spend as much time on a display as we wanted, and even though we stuck to this strategy and enjoyed the exhibition all […]
Theater Review: A One-Sided Shavian “Misalliance”
By Bill Marx When George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Misalliance, subtitled “a debate,” premiered in 1910, critics couldn’t make heads or tails of the play. It didn’t matter if the reviewer was sympathetic to Shavian excess — the evening’s self-parodying polemics and prophetic theater-of-the-absurd trappings were too much. The production closed after 11 performances: the script, […]
Theater Commentary: Menace in Minsk
Given the timidity of so many American theater companies, who seem to reserve their courage for implementing new marketing schemes, reminders of what creative risk is all about serve a useful purpose. Some theater artists around the world face jail when they perform on stage. On August 22, special forces of the Belorussian police raided […]