Innholdsfortegnelse for Oct-09-14 i The New York Review of Books

Divine Fury: A History of Genius by Darrin M. McMahon Basic Books, 312 pp., $29.99 Anyone who frequents research libraries in Europe or North America will know that it is not unusual to encounter in them individuals who appear to be rather introverted and yet sport oddly ostentatious hairstyles, with unkempt shocks of hair sprouting with peculiar abandon from their pallid male scalps. You can still encounter the odd Yeatsian dandy, but the slightly disheveled Einsteinian archetype seems largely to have prevailed in the academy, just as the Beethovenian archetype has long prevailed in the world of music. This phenomenon alone, the slightly embarrassing aping of the superficial attributes of genius, reveals an ersatz quality to the idea of genius we have inherited; even in the most solemn temples to…

Malevich an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, October 18, 2013–February 2, 2014; the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, March 8–June 22, 2014; and Tate Modern, London, July 16–October 26, 2014. Catalog of the Tate exhibition edited by Achim Borchardt-Hume London: Tate Publishing, 264 pp., $49.95 (paper) Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde: Featuring Selections from the Khardzhiev and Costakis Collections Catalog of the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum by Sophie Tates, Karen Kelly, Bart Rutten, and Geurt Imanse Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 240 pp., $59.95 Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism by Aleksandra Shatskikh, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz Yale University Press, 346 pp., $40.00 Kazimir Malevich was perhaps the most fearless innovator in twentieth-century art. Aleksandra Shatskikh, whose Black…

Überlegungen II–VI (Schwarze Hefte 1931–1938) [Reflections II–VI (Black Notebooks 1931–1938)] by Martin Heidegger, edited by Peter Trawny Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 536 pp., €68.00 Überlegungen VII–XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938/39) [Reflections VII–XI (Black Notebooks 1938/39)] by Martin Heidegger, edited by Peter Trawny Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 456 pp., €58.00 Überlegungen XII–XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939–1941) [Reflections XII–XV (Black Notebooks 1939–1941)] by Martin Heidegger, edited by Peter Trawny Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 286 pp., €44.00 In the autumn of 1931, the philosopher Martin Heidegger began to record his thoughts in small diaries that he called the schwarze Hefte, or “black notebooks.” By the early 1970s he had filled no fewer than thirty-four volumes with his handwritten reflections. Several of these notebooks, composed over a ten-year span from 1931 to 1941, have now appeared…

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman University of Chicago Press, 277 pp., $25.00 The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences a report by the National Research Council, edited by Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn National Academies Press, 444 pp., $74.95 (paper) Twelve years ago, when Alice Goffman was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, she took a job tutoring Aisha, a young black girl who lived in a nearby black neighborhood. She then befriended Aisha’s relatives, including her cousin Ronny, who had just been released from a juvenile detention center and was living with his family in a somewhat better part of the Philadelphia ghetto. Ronny introduced Goffman to his cousin Mike, and she began hanging…

Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice by Martha C. Nussbaum Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 457 pp., $35.00 The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead described the history of European philosophy as “a series of footnotes to Plato.” In the same spirit, one might say that since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, political philosophy in American universities has largely consisted of a series of footnotes to John Rawls. This is not to disparage the notes or their authors. Martha Nussbaum has been a productive and creative commentator on the questions raised by A Theory of Justice, and her book Political Emotions is a long and thoughtful discussion of one of them: How can we engage the citizens’ emotions—perhaps overbroadly construed here as “love”—on behalf of a more…

Today Europe is living through a difficult time. Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has called the recent elections for the European Parliament “a disaster,” going on to conclude that “all of us in Europe have to ask ourselves what we can do better...we have to improve Europe.” But what is happening in many parts of Europe today is not just a pathology; it is the predictable pathology that ensues whenever a country’s citizens suffer a protracted stagnation in their incomes and living standards. The origins of this stagnation in large parts of Europe are broadly understood. Six years ago, Europe was caught in the backwash of the financial crisis created in the American mortgage market and the US banking system more generally. Problems that were already serious in one European…

To the Editors: Please permit me to reply to the review of my Revolutionary Ideas by David Bell [NYR, July 10]. Without explaining my book’s central argument—that from the perspective of ideology and political ideas the French Revolution fragmented into three different “revolutions” embodying sharply divergent revolutionary programs and value systems—Bell judges my thesis “impossible to accept” because it “takes sides so completely with one group of its actors” and is “based so heavily on their own highly polemical writings.” He alleges that I have a “narrowly partisan point of view” and am seriously biased against the members of the Montagne faction, including Robespierre. He does so in the face of considerable evidence, drawn substantially from Jacobin sources, that Robespierre was never a sincere republican or democrat, and that the…

Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick Random House, 576 pp., $35.00 “I...am an odious person,” Coco Chanel declared. Not many would have begged to differ. Chanel’s tongue was quite as sharp as her shears and she treated everyone who worked for her harshly, playing one against the other. No one escaped her malice, not even a trusted friend like the poet Jean Cocteau, whom she described to one interviewer as nothing but a “snobbish little pederast who did nothing all his life but steal from people.” She held her own customers in contempt and said, “A woman equals envy plus vanity plus chatter plus a confused mind.” But no one ever built an empire by being nice, and Chanel, by simplifying, lightening, and eliminating…

Why Nudge? The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism by Cass R. Sunstein Yale University Press, 195 pp., $25.00 Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass R. Sunstein Simon and Schuster, 267 pp., $26.00 1. In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein considered the choices made by ordinary people about their retirement.1 Many employees have the opportunity to enroll in a 401(k) plan, in which their contributions will be sheltered from taxes and to which their employer will also contribute. But a considerable number of people do not choose to enroll in a 401(k) plan and of those who do, many select levels of contribution that are far below what would be most advantageous to them. Why? Probably because of inertia. It is easier not to make a decision…

Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State by Robert Wuthnow Princeton University Press, 654 pp., $39.50 “Bible Belt” is a phrase coined by the writer H.L. Mencken, who placed it first among the inventions of which he was vainest, followed by “booboisie,” “smuthound,” and “Boobus americanus.” Together they declare what Mencken thought of the Bible-obsessed regions of the United States, and especially that region called the Old South—a swath of states stretching from the Atlantic to Texas. A map of the Bible Belt and a map of the Confederacy are pretty much the same, and the explanation is to be found in the unbending defense of slavery by Southern Baptists before the Civil War—something everybody in the Bible Belt knows but most ignore, dismiss, or deny. In…

Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America by Steven Watts Other Press, 582 pp., $29.95 An early edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie—say, a copy from 1936, the year the book came out—is nothing special to look at. It has no bullet points, no triumphal photos of the author, no boldface chapter headings. Mostly it’s just plain text. From its appearance you might not guess the effect the book had upon the world, although a clue pops up in the title of the introduction by Lowell Thomas, a newsman and radio personality of the day. The title is “A Short-Cut to Distinction.” How to Win Friends is one of the most popular shortcuts to success, wealth, and happiness that has ever been…

Call Me Burroughs: A Life by Barry Miles Twelve, 718 pp., $32.00 Kill Your Darlings a film directed by John Krokidas Some writers have a style that readers must absorb and adopt, and for fans of William Burroughs, the compulsion can be a little hallucinogenic, particularly for vengeful teenagers with a plan to shock their parents. The irony is that Burroughs is probably the most adult American writer of his generation. He commands his own reason, and to read Burroughs is briefly to make contact with a Burroughvian version of oneself. You stagger back, newly paranoid, from a hundred pages of his novel The Soft Machine (1961), wondering about the degree of state control embedded in your life. That’s how it goes. Having, say, enjoyed the smiles and services…

The 4th Revolution: How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality by Luciano Floridi Oxford University Press, 248 pp., $27.95 Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom Oxford University Press, 328 pp., $29.95 We are all beneficiaries of the revolution in computation and information technology—for example, I write this review using devices unimaginable when I was an undergraduate—but there remain enormous philosophical confusions about the correct interpretation of the technology. For example, one routinely reads that in exactly the same sense in which Garry Kasparov played and beat Anatoly Karpov in chess, the computer called Deep Blue played and beat Kasparov. It should be obvious that this claim is suspect. In order for Kasparov to play and win, he has to be conscious that he is playing chess, and conscious of…

To the Editors: Professor Cass Sunstein rates Justice John Paul Stevens’s proposal to ban gerrymandering as less important than the proposal to authorize limits on money in politics [“The Refounding Father,” NYR, June 5]. Political money, though surely excessive, can be used by all sides to a political issue. Gerrymandering, by contrast, is used to entrench the power of all incumbents at the expense of all challengers, and thereby poses the greater threat to democracy. His observation that “party leaders would try to evade” an amendment to ban gerrymandering and “it would not be so easy for courts to prevent that evasion” could as well be said of every restriction adopted to curtail every abuse of power. Jon O. Newman Senior Judge, US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit…

The Informed Air: Essays by Muriel Spark, edited and with a preface by Penelope Jardine New Directions, 286 pp., $24.95 Curriculum Vitae: A Volume of Autobiography by Muriel Spark New Directions, 222 pp., $14.95 (paper) The Comforters by Muriel Spark New Directions, 214 pp., $15.95 (paper) Memento Mori by Muriel Spark New Directions, 223 pp., $15.95 (paper) The Bachelors by Muriel Spark New Directions, 231 pp., $15.95 (paper) The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark New Directions, 142 pp., $14.95 (paper) The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark New Directions, 88 pp., $14.95 (paper) Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark New Directions, 188 pp., $15.95 (paper) Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark New Directions, 166 pp., $15.95 (paper) A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark New Directions, 176 pp., $15.95…

The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East by Juan Cole Simon and Schuster, 348 pp., $26.00 Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East by Shadi Hamid Oxford University Press, 269 pp., $27.95 Not long ago, I spent an afternoon in a half-empty Cairo café with Ziad el-Elaimy, a left-wing Egyptian lawyer and one of the core group of young activists who helped plan the protests that led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Elaimy was injured by regime thugs in Tahrir Square, and went on to win a seat during the parliamentary elections later that year. He is a remarkable man: insightful, brave, and funny, free of the strident narcissism that afflicts so many self-appointed revolutionaries. When I…

Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm Knopf, 290 pp., $27.95 Hardship and Happiness by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, translated from the Latin by Elaine Fantham, Harry M. Hine, James Ker, and Gareth D. Williams University of Chicago Press, 318 pp., $55.00 The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca by Emily Wilson Oxford University Press, 253 pp., $29.95 In AD 65, the elderly philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca was forced to commit suicide on the orders of the emperor Nero. He had once been the emperor’s tutor and adviser, though he had withdrawn into retirement when the true character of Nero’s reign became clear, and he had recently become rather too closely involved with an unsuccessful coup (quite how closely, we shall never know). He must have…

1. In the early days of the Gaza war that took the lives of some 2,100 Palestinians and seventy-two Israelis, a number of officials in Washington, Ramallah, and Jerusalem began to speak of renewing Israeli–Palestinian negotiations mediated by the United States. As the fighting dragged on, this talk intensified, again showing that the “peace process” gains greatest urgency from the threat of Israeli–Palestinian violence. There is little reason to believe that renewed talks would succeed. The obstacles that caused the failure of the negotiations led by Secretary of State John Kerry have not disappeared. Many of them have grown larger. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his political program of nonviolence and negotiation have been weakened by Hamas’s strategy in Gaza, which impressed many Palestinians, although the costs were enormous. Hamas…

Being Realistic about Reasons by T.M. Scanlon Oxford University Press, 132 pp., $29.95 1. Philosophy has always been concerned with the largest questions of what exists and what is the case. Not specific questions like “Is there extraterrestrial life?” or “What is the speed of light in a vacuum?” but maximally general questions about what kinds of things exist and what kinds of facts there are—basic kinds that cannot be defined in terms of anything still more basic, and from which everything else is constituted. This is the subject matter of metaphysics. A related question, how we can know about such things, is the subject matter of epistemology. There is disagreement about how far a philosophical account of existence, truth, and knowledge can depart from the assumptions that underlie ordinary,…

Inside Ukraine, driving north from the Sea of Azov, an appendage of the Black Sea, along rutted country roads that snake parallel to the Russian border, we saw abandoned Ukrainian military encampments and the twisted remains of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other vehicles. The Ukrainian cell phone signal died and our phones picked up the Russian one. Wherever we met rebel soldiers, they joked and chatted. They were relaxed. A cease-fire had been agreed on the day before, on September 5, and along the border there was no reason not to be relaxed. Ukrainian forces had been driven out of here, just as they had in other parts of eastern Ukraine. When the conflict began this April, the Ukrainians rapidly lost territory to rebel anti-Kiev, pro-Russian forces. In the…

To the Editors: The fall LIVE from the New York Public Library season features a number of conversations with contributors to The New York Review, including Michael Ignatieff, Sister Helen Prejean, Joyce Carol Oates, and James Gleick. Other guests, many of whom have been discussed in the Review’s pages, include Ben Lerner, Joseph O’Neill, Hal Foster, Alexei Ratmansky, Marjane Satrapi, Bryan Stevenson, George Clinton, Neil Gaiman, Etgar Keret, Gina B. Nahai, Salar Abdoh, Assaf Gavron, William Gibson, Marlon James, and Salman Rushdie. For more information, see www.nypl.org/live. Paul Holdengräber Director, LIVE from the NYPL The New York Public Library New York City…