Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This week on nybooks.com: John Gray on the anti-Communist Karl Marx, Anka Muhlsteinon the Impressionists, Robert Kuttner on debt, Joshua Hammer on trouble in Kenya, David Cole on the life of Anthony Lewis, Stéphanie Giry on a Khmer Rouge funeral, Amy Knighton human rights in Russia, Charles Simic on reading poetry on the road, Jonathan Mirskyon buying socks for Margaret Thatcher, Shelley Wanger on New York in the 1970s, and a celebration of the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska.
The Real Karl Marx John Gray Today Marx is inseparable from the idea of communism, but he was not always wedded to it. Lamenting that “our once blossoming commercial cities are no longer flourishing,” he once declared that the spread of Communist ideas would “defeat our intelligence, conquer our sentiments.”
The Debt We Shouldn’t Pay Robert Kuttner In 22 percent of America’s homes with mortgages, the debt exceeds the value of the house. Young adults begin economic life saddled with student debt that recently reached a trillion dollars, limiting their purchasing power. Middle-class families use debt as a substitute for wages and salaries that have lagged behind the cost of living.
Paris: The Thrill of the Modern Anka Muhlstein To walk into the first few rooms of the exhibition “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity,” now at the Metropolitan Museum, is to allow oneself to be immersed in the sweetness of life in the Belle Époque. But what makes the exhibition so interesting is less the intersection of art with fashion than the concept of the modernity of art as it was understood by the artists of the last half of the nineteenth century.
Anthony Lewis (1927-2013) David Cole Lewis was more than a path-breaking newspaperman. He was the nation’s most consistent voice for justice for over half a century. In his books and columns, he insistently told stories of injustice, with the evident hope that by telling them, he might help create pressure to correct wrongs.				In the Kenyan Cauldron Joshua Hammer Kenya’s presidential election was supposed to display the country’s progress into the modern, post-tribal era—and Uhuru Kenyatta was said to symbolize a transformation. Photogenic and rich, he is part of a new generation of Kenyan elite who drive their SUVs on Nairobi’s new superhighways and sip cappuccinos in the city’s sleek shopping malls. Yet Kenyatta has been shadowed by a darker reputation.
					IN THE MAY 9 ISSUE William Pfaff on Garry Wills’s Why Priests?, Michael Dirda on Sherlock Holmes, Mary Beardon Spartacus, Alison Lurie on Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs,Marcia Angell on the good life, Norman Davies on totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, Max Rodenbeckon Sayyid Qutb, Louis Begleyon André Aciman, Bill McKibben on global warming, and more.
A Poet of Consciousness: Wislawa Szymborska For the fourth week of our National Poetry Month celebration, we are featuring the work of Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish poet who was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”
A Poet on the Road Charles Simic Once I shared the bill with a magician and a local rock band. It was packed, I remember, with a rough young crowd who were there to hear the band and who were okay with the magician being the first act, but grew unruly once they learned that a poet was to follow. If I didn’t panic and run, it was because I desperately needed the hundred bucks I was to be paid, and because I already had some experience with hostile audiences.
A Khmer Rouge Goodbye Stéphanie Giry Outside the room where Ieng Sary’s coffin lay, some ninety monks chanted for a long while and then followed a band of white cloth around the pyre, gathering alms: water, small amounts of cash, and many packets of instant noodles. It was just the kind of Buddhist ritual that the Khmer Rouge had ruthlessly banned.
A Music of Overpowering Affection Geoffrey O’Brien William Christie’s production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s opera David et Jonathas was an incredibly compressed, exhilarating, and finally wrenching experience. Indeed it is hard to imagine that what the original audience heard at the work’s first performance in 1688 could have surpassed what Christie elicited from his players and singers at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Russia After Boston: A Free Pass on Human Rights? Amy Knight The close cooperation between Moscow and Washington on the Boston bombing investigation raises new questions about the issue of human rights. Will the US turn a blind eye to Russia’s increasingly brutal crackdown on its own democratic opposition because of overriding concerns about national security?					Clearing the Men’s Room for Margaret Thatcher Jonathan Mirsky When a woman from 10 Downing Street told me over the phone that I was invited to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, I immediately suspected a scam. I had never been a parliamentary journalist. But I did have a little history with Mrs. Thatcher, including four personal encounters.
FILM The Weimar Touch Directors such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder were Germany’s loss and Hollywood's gain, writes J. Hoberman		LECTURES Out of Site in Plain View Martin Fillerrecommends curator Barry Bergdoll’s series of lectures at The National Gallery of Art.		ART Picasso and Chicago The love affair between Picasso and Chicago goes back a long time, as Philip Gossettreminds us.		ALSO IN THE CALENDAR Renata Adler at the Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, Henri Labrouste at MoMA, the achievement and legacy of Vasily Grossman, an evening with Jan Morris, a lecture bySimon Head on information technology at war, an exhibition of Pietro Bembo in Padova, Robert Silversdiscusses publishing at the PEN World Voices Festival, El Anatsui at the Brooklyn Museum, and more.
It Was 1975… Shelley Wanger In the morning, it was usually rather quiet until Bob dashed in—a tornado of energy. He had a thousand ideas and out of his suit pockets fished a matchbook cover or some other scrap with the crucial contact, writer’s name, or title of a book which we were meant to pursue immediately. “Immediately” being the favored mode of operation—how else could he get that story, or that writer?