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Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate VERITAS ODIT MORAS Friday December 25, 2020 Support Arts & Letters Daily × Subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter Do not show this again Alternate view Since 1998, Arts & Letters Daily has linked to more than 17,000 articles, book reviews and essays. Consider supporting us. » Dec. 25, 2020 Articles of Note Fifty years ago, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice . Is it still possible to reason together about the common good? ... more » New Books A.J. Ayer quipped that the problem with logical positivism was that “nearly all of it was false.” But it was "true in spirit" ... more » Essays & Opinions What was so different about Beethoven ? The novelty of his rhythms, which turned into plot, into argument, into speech ... more » Dec. 24, 2020 Articles of Note Does instant communication mean the death of the literary letter ? It depends on how you define a letter ... more » New Books Harold Bloom viewed literature as a contest , measuring writers against a yardstick of purportedly timeless values ... more » Essays & Opinions America, writes David Blight, is polarized in a cold civil war . The core questions of the original Civil War and Reconstruction era remain unanswered ... more » Dec. 23, 2020 Articles of Note To understand why science is so widely distrusted , we must see how that attitude has arisen ... more » New Books Merpeople : For Linnaeus, they were next to seals and manatees, for Darwin, they explained a missing link. Now they’re being connected to queer identity ... more » Essays & Opinions “Rather than shoving all our debates into a single, hellish town square, let each town have its own” ... more » Dec. 22, 2020 Articles of Note For Leonora Carrington , humanity was a seductive costume donned by dummies. Abandoning the costume courted madness but also brought liberation... more » New Books Fredrik deBoer and Michael Sandel say meritocracy is a bad idea , but really their beef is with the imperfect implementation of the system... more » Essays & Opinions A failed philosophical mission: Plato urged Dionysius I to abandon wine and orgies. In response, the tyrant sold Plato into slavery... more » Dec. 21, 2020 Articles of Note Liberalism, a never-ending quest to find the best way for diverse people to live together, is in decline. We need a better liberalism ... more » New Books Heinrich Heine was an idealistic devotee of German culture. That didn't blind him to what made it so dangerous ... more » Essays & Opinions Scientists' mistakes are regrettable but usually not sinister. Science remains the gold standard of truth . And it needs defending ... more » Dec. 19, 2020 Articles of Note How to start an independent publishing house in 2020? Recruit billionaire backers, make podcast and film-rights agreements, figure out distribution... more » New Books The best of 20th-century philosophy urges us to be fearless, critical, and creative, and to avoid orthodoxies, ideologies, and obscurantist nonsense... more » Essays & Opinions E.P. Thompson’s rise was a paradoxical intellectual event: “history from below” promised social uplift, yet ignored colonial realities... more » Dec. 18, 2020 Articles of Note In the aggregate, high expectations for the future have made the world a better place. Individually, however, it's made us miserable... more » New Books Isabel Wilkerson’s study of caste illuminates much about India. But in an American context, it merely obfuscates ... more » Essays & Opinions The banality of empathy. Empathizing with fictional characters is too often seen as an ethical good. It’s not ... more » Dec. 17, 2020 Articles of Note Beethoven and freedom . "We may judge what is merely beautiful, but sublime art judges us, or better said, it challenges us to judge ourselves” ... more » New Books Of the many misrepresentations about Adorno , the most persistent is that he had little aptitude for practical politics. Nonsense ... more » Essays & Opinions Why have restaurant reviews become smackdowns? Our appetite for blood sport distorts how critics write and think about food ... more » Dec. 16, 2020 Articles of Note To say that John le Carré invented the modern spy novel doesn’t do justice to his achievement. His fictional world blurred into reality... more » New Books For Twain and Woolf, little was as tedious as discussing the weather . And yet such conversation continues — implacably, abysmally... more » Essays & Opinions William Gaddis was cynical about America, wishing it were more like Costa Rica. But he never lost hope entirely... more » Dec. 15, 2020 Articles of Note Book thieves come in two varieties: the rogue custodians, who exploit their access to literary treasures, and the academics ... more » New Books A spate of books peddles philosophers, from Socrates to William James, as gurus of the good life. Try Spinoza ... more » Essays & Opinions Eating with Italian futurists : oranges should be balanced on one’s head, meat eating should be synchronized with trumpet blasts, pasta should be avoided ... more » Dec. 14, 2020 Articles of Note Why were doctors and nurses uniquely attracted to Nazi philosophy , enlisting in much higher proportions than any other profession? ... more » New Books Is strongman a useful category for political analysis? A new book stretches the definition beyond its limits... more » Essays & Opinions J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis sought to transform the world by reintroducing old stories. Nearly a century later, they’ve been remarkably successful ... more » Dec. 12, 2020 Articles of Note Just 11 percent of books published by large presses in 2018 were written by people of color. Why is publishing so white? ... more » New Books Philip Roth , Jewish patron saint of rage and writing, never forgave ex-wives, nosy neighbors, or scathing critics. His thin skin grew thinner over the years... more » Essays & Opinions Before the Gilded Age, classical music was on par with juggling acts and vaudeville tunes. Beer — not wine — flowed. What changed?... more » Dec. 11, 2020 Articles of Note For Barbara Guest , writing poetry meant no planning — just waiting for a poem to compose itself spontaneously... more » New Books When people struggle to read a classic like the Iliad, it’s not because of a moral aversion. It’s because they’re bored and confused ... more » Essays & Opinions Consider pinnacles of literary culture : Elizabethan England, 19th-century Russia, Flaubert’s France. America, in 2020, is at the other end of that spectrum ... more » Dec. 10, 2020 Articles of Note “Steer clear of adjectives!” is an ancient piece of writerly wisdom. And yet adjectives are what reveal the genius of writers like Nabokov and Borges... more » New Books What’s behind the highbrow hostility to works of self-help? It’s the status anxiety of professional critics, argues a new book... more » Essays & Opinions For the academic left, science is a hegemonic force with sweeping authority over the modern world. But that misunderstands science ... more » Dec. 9, 2020 Articles of Note Was Orwell's reputation protected by his early death? He avoided several controversies that would have altered how we see him ... more » New Books Beneath Thorstein Veblen’s austere exterior and grim scowl lurked a dimly perceptible reservoir of hope ... more » Essays & Opinions Now bludgeoned by liberals, the idea of American exceptionalism was itself a creation of the left ... more » Dec. 8, 2020 Articles of Note The tortured letters of T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale . He was a married man writing incessantly and “tampering insidiously” with her mind ... more » New Books Michel Gallimard and Albert Camus were killed in a car crash in 1960. Gallimard was driving fast, but was foul play the true cause? ... more » Essays & Opinions What does the pandemic portend for the arts in America ? We can’t even agree that culture matters, much less how to protect it...