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Article: Music for Chameleons.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- July 23, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE SCARLET PROFESSOR. Newton Arvin:
A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal.
By Barry Werth.
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. 325 pp. $26.
When they came for Newton Arvin, as he had always known they someday would--the sex cops, the truth squad, the Cossacks, fathers and philistines--he spilled his beings. In the cross-shaped top-floor apartment of his Northampton tower, "unbreachable save for two narrow sets of steeply twisting stairs," the 60-year-old professor of English at Smith College was listening to Mozart, reading Proust and drinking Scotch. He didn't own a TV set. (Nor had he ever learned to drive.) But there were drawers full of linen shirts and cashmere ...