Новости за 12.10.2017

LITERARY CRITICISM: A CONCISE POLITICAL HISTORY By Joseph North Harvard University Press, 272 pp., $39.95

For all the debates that have roiled literature departments over the past 60 years, the history of the discipline itself is a source of surprising consensus. According to the standard narrative, mid-twentieth-century literary studies served a conservative agenda, fostering traditional values and upholding a canon of dead white men. The dominant school of interpretation was New Criticism, whose... Читать дальше...

LITERARY CRITICISM: A CONCISE POLITICAL HISTORY By Joseph North Harvard University Press, 272 pp., $39.95

For all the debates that have roiled literature departments over the past 60 years, the history of the discipline itself is a source of surprising consensus. According to the standard narrative, mid-twentieth-century literary studies served a conservative agenda, fostering traditional values and upholding a canon of dead white men. The dominant school of interpretation was New Criticism, whose... Читать дальше...

The boat arrived on September 7, charging onto the beach. That morning, passengers plunged into the surf, then disappeared onto the shore, seeking shelter and a chance to sleep. In the distance, plumes of smoke drifted up from the horizon: Myanmar was burning.

The best moment in the new survival drama The Mountain Between Us is when a cellphone rings. Ben (Idris Elba) and Alex (Kate Winslet) are stranded up a mountain after a plane crash, her phone smashed and his without signal. As the signature iPhone ringtone warbled around the movie theater, the audience drew in their breath: They’re saved! But no. It was just an elderly attendee who picked up his phone to stage-whisper, “I’m in a movie.”

The Democratic establishment was shocked—and in some cases appalled—by Bernie Sanders’s insurgent bid for president last year. How could 12 million primary voters cast ballots not for market-friendly progressivism or New Deal liberalism, but democratic socialism? And against a Clinton, no less? But astonishment eventually gave way to acceptance, even implicitly from the nominee herself: the success of Sanders’s campaign was no fluke, proving that the Democratic Party had moved decisively to the left. Читать дальше...

“It is completely unsafe to be here at this moment,” said Jennifer Franco, a resident of Fairfield, California, on Wednesday afternoon, as massive wildfires ripped through Santa Rosa and Napa a few miles west. But she wasn’t talking about the flames—she was talking about the smoke. Accelerated by high-speed seasonal winds, ash-laden air was blowing eastward, directly into her neighborhood. “Since Tuesday morning, air quality is beyond terrible,” she said. “I’ve been having chest pain, and now I’m using a respirator.”

In Sebastopol... Читать дальше...