Page 27 - Eric Alterman News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Philip Roth As a rule, I read few biographies, and certainly not of authors, people whose most significant life events are spent alone. In my case, Churchill, Swift, and Dostoyevsky are the exceptions that prove the rule; world-historical figures who can't be understood outside the context of their times. So I'd already decided not to bother with Blake Bailey's ballyhooed new book, Philip Roth: The Biography—even though Roth was a friendly acquaintance who'd given me help and encouragement way back when. After all, his novels were semi-autobiographical; his memoirs a veritable hall of mir...

Former US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, speaking in 2009. We were bound to talk endlessly about the April 27 Human Rights Watch report accusing Israel of the “crime of apartheid” — but the news justifies us being a broken record. The report is getting a lot of attention in ways that earlier apartheid findings have not, including in the New York Times, and it appears to be filtering into the U.S. discourse. The report has the capability to build moral urgency about Palestine in U.S. politics, Omar Baddar said yesterday on a Jerusalem Fund webinar, because of HRW’s ped...

Given the accusations of abuse made against Blake Bailey, Gene Lyons writes, he has no interesting “at all” in reading Bailey’s Philip Roth biography. As a rule, I read few biographies, and certainly not of authors, people whose most significant life events are spent alone. In my case, Churchill, Swift and Dostoyevsky are the exceptions that prove the rule: world historical figures who can’t be understood outside the context of their times. So I’d already decided not to bother with Blake Bailey’s ballyhooed new book, “Philip Roth: The Biography” — even though Roth was a fri...

An émigré architectural historian who teaches across disciplines in California, at a public university near Apple’s lair in the Bay Area (close to San Francisco), is posting an essay. Since architectural stories are surprising rare on the edge of the continent, he needed a shtick; no matter what’s his connoisseur-ish personal tastes and leftist political dispositions. Simon  Sadler published an essay on March 13/2013 in The Design Observer Group: “Steve Jobs: Architect” Top: Apple store, Fifth Avenue, New York. [Photo by Eric Wüstenhagen] Bottom: Steve Jobs and Rem Koolhaas. [P...

Altercation: Celebrating Ellsberg at 90 and DeGrom at Just One The stories of the guy who snitched on Dan, and the Mets who still can’t hit Alex Menendez/AP Photo Daniel Ellsberg, right, speaks with Lowell Bergman, director of the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, August 27, 2014. Beginning on April 30, there will be a star-studded—by peacenik national-security metrics—conference on the life and influence of Daniel Ellsberg, and especially his role in the 1971 Pentagon Papers drama. Also marking the occasion, The New Yorker publi...