For two years I was caught between passionate liberals and conservatives among my fellow inmates at Fort Pelham. Most prisoners are ideologues. There is nothing else to do. Both sides had compelling arguments. Each could argue plausibly for and against religion, God, Israel, blacks, affirmative action, Nicaragua. It was more natural for me, less boring,…
It is a bad time for psychiatrists. Old-fashioned shrinks are out of style and generally out of work. We, who like our mentor Dr. Freud believe there is a psyche, that it is born to trouble as the sparks fly up, that one gets at it, the root of trouble, the soul’s own secret, by…
The article examines several references to Friedrich Nietzsche made by Robert Musil in his non-fictional writings. An indication of Nietzsche’s significance for Musil is given by the fact that only one name occurs more often than Nietzsche’s in the collected works of Musil, where references to the philosopher span a period of more than forty…
THE PLACE WHERE the strange events related in this book occur, Feliciana, is not imaginary. It was so named by the Spanish. It was and is part of Louisiana, a strip of pleasant pineland running from the Mississippi River to the Perdido, a curious region of a curious state. Never quite Creole or French or…
Thirty years earlier the child knew that something was going to happen, and that the something was all he ever wanted or needed to know, and that it only remained for him to wait for it to happen and to settle for nothing less until it did. What was the something? Women? War? Or victory…
I’m pleased to see that Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite has been rereleased — well, it was some eight years ago, as I’ve just discovered. Anyway, here is a review piece by Hitch on the reissue from the days when The Atlantic still retained some distinction. anti-SemitismChristopher HitchensGregor von Rezzorimemoirs of an anti-semitephilosophical literature
Men in this century are no different from the Jews at Buchenwald who did not give themselves leave to resist death. I know your name at last, he said, laughing and hooting hee hee hooooee like a pig-caller and kicking the tires, and you are not going to prevail over me. Old father of lies,…
Unfortunately for the poor man awaiting the Last Days and raving away at God and man in the bowels of Sourwood Mountain directly below thousands of normal folk playing golf and antiquing and barbecuing and simply enjoying the fall colors—for on the following day at the height of his lunacy the cloud blew away and…
Will it not be a relief to all of mankind to have this dreary question settled once and for all, proved or disproved? Imagine! We shall no longer have to listen to preachers haranguing unbelievers about God’s existence, and professors haranguing people about God’s nonexistence and mythic structures? ***** But I’ve always been suspicious of…
Take Christians. I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though they, the Christians of the South, the U.S.A., the Western world have killed off more people in recent centuries than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don’t…
manwithoutqualities 