New Criterion

"Baltimore Inspired by Poe" & "Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon 1809-1849" Baltimore Museum of Art. October 4, 2009-January 17, 2010 "Edgar Allan Poe: More Than a Poet" Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore. January 20, 2009-December 31, 2009 At II...

The abstractions of Gerhard Richter tend to be mediocre paintings and polarizing works of conceptual art. An aura of academic theory surrounds them. To first encounter them in person is generally a so-so affair. There is much to look at but little to...

No question about it, the press release pronounced: Our health care system is "broken." To fix it, an enlightened reformer, President Barack Obama, is doing his best to fulfill a solemn promise of Change: a dramatic overhaul to provide guaranteed, irrevocable...

Starry Messenger has for its star Matthew Broderick, and, like a star, he is cold and remote. This is the story of an emotionally dead man who achieves resurrection through adultery--oh, boundless self-serving theme!--but this particular Lazarus never...

On the face of it, my inclusion in this issue of The New Criterion is odd. I'm a novelist. So you'll forgive me if my approach to my topic is narrative, and focused on my bread and butter: emotion. For I believe that money is an enormously emotional...

Many readers will recall our reporting on the "Duke rape case" in May 2007. In that specimen of academic political correctness, three Duke lacrosse players were indicted on (as it turned out) false charges of kidnapping and raping a black stripper. The...

"Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty" The New Museum, New York. October 21, 2009-February 7, 2010 I had the bad luck of visiting The New Museum on the day Urs Fischer's tongue went missing. Not the Swiss artist's actual tongue, mind you, but Noisette (2009),...