Recently added articles from American Scholar:
Updike at rest.(Editor's Note)
Mar 22, 2009; ... In all the many elegant tributes to John Updike that appeared in the first days and weeks after his death in late January, I missed any mention of the thing that was troubling me most. Soon after he died I had said to a friend, half in jest, that I felt as if a minor god, who kept careful ...
Causality and contingency.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 22, 2009; ... John Lukacs's article in your Winter 2009 issue purports to enhance the readers' knowledge of the methodologies of history and science by demonstrating that both rely on subjectivity. The area allowed for subjectivity in science, however, is much more constricted than in history. The key ...
Savage legacy.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 22, 2009; ... John Tirman, citing Richard Slotkin, writes of a "morally cleansing series of 'savage wars' that conveyed upon the pioneers a 'regeneration through violence.'" I fail to see moral cleansing in the triumphalism with which most Americans have viewed the realization of Manifest Destiny. My ...
Naming names.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 22, 2009; ... Clay Risen's "Spies Among Us" enlightened yet saddened me, particularly his warning that "as of late 2008, there are approximately a million names in the Terrorist Screening Database." Government-paid employees also developed alleged "security" files on Albert Einstein, Louis Armstrong, ...
Literary encounters.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 22, 2009; ... Steven Isenberg's essay in the Winter issue richly evokes his meetings with four august lovers of language. As a broadcaster of many years, during which I interviewed more than 1,600 authors, I was reminded of the joy I had in meeting them and of that curious sense of not ever being quite ...
Censorship in France.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 22, 2009; ... My own experience with Sartre's and Beauvoir's heirs and literary executors is not the same as Hazel Rowley's, as mentioned in her Point of Departure column in the Winter issue. In 1998, I was authorized by Arlette Elkaim-Sartre to publish in extenso a letter Sartre wrote in July 1942 that ...
Directions.(Letters)(Correction notice)
Mar 22, 2009 ... The caption for the photo on page 144 in the Winter issue should read: Sartre with his lover, Lena Zonina (center), and Beauvoir. A cover line in the same ...
A Twombly ceiling.(Letter from Paris)(Cy Twombly )
Mar 22, 2009; ... Oe morning in late January, after a ride on the Paris metro to its terminus in the eastern suburb of Montreuil and a cold 10-minute walk through an industrial zone, I arrive at a nondescript, unheated warehouse. Inside, laid out on the floor of the large, open space, is a 33-meter-long ...
The sound of laptops.(Works in Progress)(Stanford Laptop Orchestra)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Twenty computer scientists and musicians take seats on stage and open their MacBooks, and soon the concert hall at Stanford University fills with the sonic grandeur--if not the exact sounds--of a full symphony orchestra. The players operate keyboards, ...
Life in Venice.(Works in Progress)(limiting entry of tourists in Venice)
Mar 22, 2009; ... For many travelers, both actual and armchair, Venice is wrapped in mystery and romance. So popular has this floating miracle become--and so overwhelmed by tourists during summer months--that a recent mayor proposed limiting entry by sightseers. The tiny city on the Adriatic faces threats ...
Locks for lettuces.(Works in Progress)(testing hair as fertilizer)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2009; ... The grisly belief that a person's hair continues to grow after death is an urban legend, but studies at Mississippi State University are proving that hair clippings still have a little life in them. In a series of experiments, plant and food scientists added three to 10 ounces ...
A Stein is a Stein is a Stein.(Works in Progress)(Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories exhibition)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From aspiring Gibson girl to Left Bank intellectual to stony neo-classical figure, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) consciously reshaped her public image. The way she cultivated relationships with visual artists to project those changing identities is the focus ...
E pluribus unum.(Works in Progress)(Ten Thousand Cents art project)(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2009; ... Contemporary art continues to fetch astounding prices, but Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima are fixing the tag for reproductions of their latest work at an even $100. It's an obvious choice, since $100 is both the total labor cost of the piece and the face value of the finished work. ...
Smarter than dirt.(Works in Progress)(behavior of slime molds )(Brief article)
Mar 22, 2009; ... You can't outfox natural selection for billions of years without some rudimentary smarts. Now scientists in Europe and Japan are showing that primordial slime molds are clever enough to reveal how animal cells glom together to form intelligent creatures. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...
Who was hall? And just what was his connection to hedgehogs?(Tuning Up)(Marshall Hall)
Mar 22, 2009; ... Periodically I shift through the detritus on my desk, which consists of countess levels of documents--papers, offprints, old e-mails, and Christmas cards--that must have meant something to me at one time but now seem utterly mysterious. A recent excavation uncovered a layer having to do ...
The terminator comes to Wall Street: how computer modeling worsened the financial crisis and what we ought to do about it.(Exhortation)
Mar 22, 2009; ... You've seen this story in countless Hollywood science-fiction movies, from The Terminator to War Games. Scientists develop a ophisticated computer or robot to assure the nation's security, but something goes wrong and the technology itself mutates into a catastrophic threat. Unfortunately, ...
Purpose-driven life: evolution does not rob life of meaning, but creates meaning. It also makes possible our own capacity for creativity.(The Year of Darwin)(Cover story)
Mar 22, 2009; ... [Darwinism] seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength ...
Second chances, social forgiveness, and the Internet: we need the means, both technological and legal, to replace measures once woven into the fabric of communities.
Mar 22, 2009; ... A young man in upstate New York drinks too much and gets a little rowdy, picks a fight, smashes up the bar, and is arrested. When he gets into trouble again a short time later, the judge sends him to jail for a week. After his release, he gets fired and cannot find a new job because he has ...
The man who shot the man who shot Lincoln: the hatter Boston Corbett was celebrated as a hero for killing John Wilkes Booth. Fame and fortune did not follow, but madness did.
Mar 22, 2009; ... For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men; and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. ...
Belmont Park.(Poem)
Mar 22, 2009; ... <Pre> Belmont Park I can only get there in a dream now,In a poem. The streets and alleys to the south of itAre still a bit seamy, and the BeachcomberIs still a dive smelling of beer and urine,But the real estate is simply worth too muchFor any lingering ...