Word: essays
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ITEM ABOUT THE SEXUAL ORIENTATION of Jane Austen, I am said to be "miffed" at the public response to the thesis--supposedly bruited by me--that Austen might have been gay. In an essay on Austen in the London Review of Books, I discussed Austen's profound emotional bond with her sister, but I did not say that I thought she was homosexual in any self-conscious or active way or that she had sex with her sister. My remarks have been sensationalized by the British press, and I am afraid you have simply followed suit. TERRY CASTLE, Professor Department...
There's a little bit of the unabomber in most of us. We may not share his approach to airing a grievance, but the grievance itself feels familiar. In the recently released excerpts of his still unpublished 35,000-word essay, the serial bomber complains that the modern world, for all its technological marvels, can be an uncomfortable, "unfulfilling" place to live. It makes us behave in ways "remote from the natural pattern of human behavior." Amen.VCRs and microwave ovens have their virtues, but in the everyday course of our highly efficient lives, there are times when something seems deeply...
Perhaps the ultimate in isolating technologies is television, especially when linked to a VCR and a coaxial cable. Harvard professor Robert Putnam, in a recent and much noted essay titled "Bowling Alone," takes the demise of bowling leagues as a metaphor for the larger trend of asocial entertainment. "Electronic technology enables individual tastes to be satisfied more fully," he concedes, but at the cost of the social gratification "associated with more primitive forms of entertainment." When you're watching TV 28 hours a week--as the average American does--that's a lot of bonding you're not out doing...
...familiar ring. In its partisanship and preference for diatribe over argument, it resembles much of what today passes for scholarship and sometimes art. While a case can be made for preserving the endowments, Hughes' shallow, sneering polemic does it little justice. Indeed, the persistently ad hominem character of his essay only fortifies the impression of an intellectual culture too coarsened to be much worth supporting. Much more than the future of two federal agencies is at stake. STEPHEN H. BALCH, President National Association of Scholars Princeton, New Jersey...
Charles Krauthammer is living in the 18th century. In "Why We Must Contain China" [ESSAY, July 31], he talks about "renewing the U.S.-Japan alliance" to safeguard our Pacific security. What Pacific security? The Vietnam War was fought, in the Krauthammerian sense, to contain China. We still haven't quite recovered from it, emotionally or financially. And now must we rush into the arms of our former enemies, Japan and Vietnam, as Krauthammer proposes, to contain ''the emerging giant of the 21st century"? I am all for pressuring China to liberalize its stance on human rights and other issues...