Verdi’s Decentered Epic
The first act of Verdi’s Don Carlos is almost an opera in itself: in a matter of minutes the prospect of a happy destiny is born,...
The Imaginative Imperative
An anecdote: it is twenty or so years ago, and two friends, J. and M., are in Florence, relaxedly on the trail of some of the...
Potatoes and Pomegranates
Winter had come to Nicosiaand as the last daylight wentbraziers flared on the sidewalk.In some language of Crimea—or Medea—the men’s heads benttoward an ancient clock. Was...
‘Monstrous’ or ‘Prudente’?
Elizabeth I launched her defense against the Spanish Armada in 1588 with an unforgettable image: “I have the body of a weak, and feeble woman; but...
The Forgotten Crime of War Itself
For weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney remained closeted away in various undisclosed locations while Bush administration officials announced...
Why Biology Is Not Destiny
You must know the parable about the frog that sits in a pot of water being gradually heated, allowing itself to be boiled alive: because the...
‘I Needed to Stay Approximate’
Reviewers of Sarah Manguso’s writing love to tally her words and pages—as is often the case for very short books (the “slim volume”) and very long...
Refusing Silence in Egypt
I visited Cairo in late November 2021, after a two-year absence. I knew to expect changes, and I found them. The area around Tahrir Square, emptied...
Bureaucrat’s Honor
If you’ve ever been curious about how America’s so-called deep state really works, these three memoirs are a good place to start. Their authors were, until...
Being Dickens
I never tire of its nine hundred pages, of reading it, teaching it, talking about it. “London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting...
