These drawings, which appear in “di Umbris,” a dossier of Gerard Bellaart drawings just published by Moloko, were not intended as commentary on current events. But I can’t shake the sensation that they are.
Will the ‘Four Freedoms’ Go the Way of the Dodo Bird?
The Bible gave us the Ten Commandments. The Constitution gave us the first 10 amendments, our Bill of Rights. Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave us the ‘Four Freedoms,’ chiseled in stone at the tip of Roosevelt Island as a monumental reminder of his legacy. Will the monument be all that’s left of his legacy?
David Erdos: ‘The United Hates of America’
You can be sure his poem will not be read at the Orange Turd’s coronation.
Human Figuration as an Expression of Ideas
These drawings move across centuries, from the Middle Ages to our blighted times in an unflinching rawness that gives no comfort. Nothing is omitted. You will find the sexual inscribed like watermarks of passion and anguish. The demonic appears in equal measure with the angelic. Most of all, not unlike cave drawings of prehistoric times, they are an existential record of a particular creature, Bellaart by name.
‘What Is There to Frighten Us?’
the world’s condition
was never intended
to forego the pleasure
of a passing hope
Lionel Ziprin: ‘One of the Secret Heroes of Our Time’
“I am not an artist. I am not an
outsider. I am a citizen of the
republic and I have remained
anonymous all the time by choice.”
I Guess It Had to Happen
Julian Peters has done Poe, Rimbaud, Frost, Keats, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, Villon, Yeats, Sassoon, and plenty of others — and they’re all damn well done — so why not T.S. Eliot?
‘Dear Willy’ Tells a War Tale of Love and Hope
The letters that Hollywood director William Wyler and his wife Talli wrote to each other during World War II are the basis of a new documentary directed by Taylor Alexander.
Underground Railroad: Walt Whitman Bears Witness
… to “the runaway slave” in his most famous poem, “Song of Myself,” which first appeared untitled in his self-published collection Leaves of Grass, in 1855.
One More Missive from the Department of Letters
By popular demand, here’s another letter from Nelson Algren, this time a big fat gossipy one apparently in reply to questions that Roger Groening must have posed.
Not a Bad Way to Start the Week
Cleaning out one of my desk drawers, I came across a long-forgotten file folder containing a ream of letters from Nelson Algren to Roger Groening. They are a motherlode of humor, wit, and edifying entertainment, and from time to time I will post more of his letters to Roger..
‘The glide begins, direction down …’
THE HAPPY GIRL
The glide begins, direction down,
the happy girl has gone to hell.
She lies in bed, her mouth an O,
her breath a whisper of dissent.
Tipped by a Friend and Glad to Know
“Thought this would give you a smile,” he wrote. “Look whose book shows up in the first pic of this article.” It appears from the photo that my biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler, “A Talent for Trouble,” turned up in the secondhand book sale of the late Robert Gottlieb’s private library.
War Crime Outcomes —
Two Coverups in the Slaughterhouse of War
From the podcast IN THE DARK: “On November 19, 2005, a small group of U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them would become one of the most high-profile war-crimes prosecutions in American history, and then it would all fall apart. … No one was held accountable.” Why not?
On March 16, 1968, more than 500 Vietnamese men, women, and children in the village of Mi Lai were slaughtered by a platoon of U.S. soldiers. It became known as the Mi Lai massacre. The soldiers were led by Lieutenant William Calley. He was later court-martialed and convicted of murder after an Army cover-up.
D. H. Lawrence on the ‘Bitch-Goddess of Success’
The other day I took a drive over to Toby Pond and looked in at the house where I’d spent six months during the Covid lockdown. My favorite room there was a little library. It had two steep book-lined walls and high windows that gave plenty of light for reading. With nothing better to do, I pulled down Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Having read it many years ago, I had failed to appreciate it. This time it bowled me over. Here’s a small excerpt. It offers a taste of one of the novel’s major themes.
Leave It to Flaubert to Tell It as It Is
Three excerpts from the recently published edition of ‘The Letters of Gustave Flaubert,’ edited and translated by Francis Steegmullers, seem to me an apt commentary on our own time.
Malaise . . . In the Middle of Nowhere
Not helped
by late disasters
and no idea
of what to do
but write these lines
and think of better times.