NYRblog, December 28, 2011–January 17, 2012

This issue sponsored by UC Berkeley Extension

Eulogy On Christa Wolf Günter Grass Christa Wolf belonged to the generation in which I also count myself. We were stamped by National Socialism and the late—too late—realization of all the crimes committed by Germans in the span of just twelve years. Ever since, the act of writing has demanded interpreting the traces that remain.
Religion Notes from a Chinese Cave: Qigong’s Quiet Return Ian Johnson In November, I came to Jinhua, where people have come for millennia to meditate, on a ten-day retreat to study with China’s most famous teacher of qigong, a form of meditation and breathing exercises rooted in traditional Chinese religion.				Film Deep Streep? Martin Filler Among the impenetrable mysteries of modern life is how Meryl Streep can be universally regarded as the greatest dramatic film actress of our time. In my opinion, Streep is easily at her best as a comedienne, not in the high-serious roles she has favored. Watching her as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, I was uncertain whether I was witnessing a tragedy or a farce.
Music Sassy Angel Lorrie Moore If Suzzy Roche were to sit down and write a novel that was not about music and family, what a disappointment that would be. But not to worry: her charming and agile literary debut, Wayward Saints, has as its protagonist a famous musician named Mary Saint, who is finally going home to Swallow, New York, the small town where she grew up, in order to give a concert there.						Censorship Banned in China Jonathan Mirsky In late December, a foreign correspondent in Beijing emailed me to say that a four-page article on China I’d written for a special New Year’s edition of Newsweek had been carefully torn from each of the 731 copies of the magazine on sale in China. In over forty years of writing about China, I have been subjected to many forms of pressure. But this has never happened. What had I said that attracted the attention of the official shredder?
							Art An Encounter with the Past Janet Malcolm Last winter, I came into possession of the papers of an émigré psychiatrist who practiced in New York in the late 1940s and 1950s. The archive included a collection of manila envelopes stuffed with folded sheets of thin paper. As I studied the sheets with their inky typewriting and 60-year-old paper clips holding them together and leaving rust marks on the surface, my collagist’s imagination began to stir.
Economics How Austerity Is Killing Europe Jeff Madrick The European Union has become a vicious circle of burgeoning debt leading to radical austerity measures, which in turn further weaken economic conditions and result in calls for still more damaging cuts in government spending and higher taxes. Rarely do we get so stark an example of bad—arguably even perverse—economic thinking in action.
Film ‘My Week with Marilyn’ Lee Siegel If, as someone once said, all art aspires to the condition of music, then all acting aspires to the condition of pure physicality. The camera found in Marilyn Monroe the natural release it needed.						Egypt The Military and the Mayhem Yasmine El Rashidi From their position as the apparent protectors of last year’s revolution, Egypt’s military rulers have been pushed into increasingly brutal confrontations with civilians—in October, during the run-up to elections in November, and most recently, during a week of mayhem in mid December.