Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form by Lionel Abel Hill and Wang, 146 pp., $1.45 Heretofore most theorists of high drama have usually offered us this choice: Sophocles or Shakespeare. Critics who all their lives had pondered the Greek …
On Dealing with the Communist World by George F. Kennan Harper and Row, for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1964, $3.00 Winning Without War by Amitai Etzioni Doubleday, 1964, $4.95 With his customary precision, forcefulness, and expository elegance, George Kennan …
The recent revival of social criticism in America ought to be welcomed, of course. But social criticism is too easily separated from the rest of the political process; one notices in the…
In a recent essay (“In Defense of Inconsistency” DISSENT Spring 1964), the Polish writer Leszek Kolakowski characterizes the consistent man of action as one who is ready to impose his views “by war, by aggression, by provocation, by blackmail, by …
All research is intended to provide new answers to problems that are as yet unanswered. Peace research is no exception. But Mr. Oppenheimer already knows all the answers to the problem of how to create and preserve a stable peace; …
Historical concepts always tell us as much about the men who use them as about the events they are supposed to describe. Very little is given in intellectual life; artists, writers, even social scientists must choose the way they wish …
We Americans have always been a violent people, quick to flare up in self-righteous anger and lash out at our enemies. We are brutal, too. But the kind of brutality to which I am referring is not primarily physical, although …
Ours is an omnivorous culture. Even the most prickly and apparently indigestible of critics, like Lenny Bruce and Paul Goodman, get cannibalized. It ought therefore to surprise no one that a socialist leader in America should be universally honored as …
I remember Lukacs from the thirties as a Marxist literary critic who all agreed was a great, original thinker, though no one I knew had read more than one or two of his pieces. My own assent to his reputation …
What Is Meant by Decentralization and What Is Not Meant Decentralizing is increasing the number of centers of decision-making and the number of initiators of policy; increasing the awareness by individuals of the whole function in which they are involved; …
The Goldwater nomination marks a new departure in American politics. For the first time, a Presidential candidate lends focus to the conservative and reactionary forces in both parties. Goldwater is basically the candidate of the well-connected bureaucrat of the Mitchell …
At least one-third of the country seems fully prepared to vote for a right-wing candidate for President (30%-40% of Northern Democrats were for Wallace; 30-60% of Northern Republicans for Goldwater; maybe 60% of Southern whites for him). These people are …
Simply by winning the Republican nomination, Senator Goldwater has left a strong imprint on American politics. Everything now shifts in his direction. The apparatus of a major party lies in the grip of his friends: nor will they easily be …
“From Mississippi the rest of the United States seems unreal,” Bob Moses, director of the Mississippi Summer Project, remarked to a group of volunteers at our orientation session at Oxford, Ohio. At that time my own mental picture of the …
The Haunted Fifties by I. F. Stone Random House, 1963, $5.95 Events enter the world, Karl Kraus used to say, as journalistic cliches. Surely the dead hand of the word is not to be doubted in our day: these cliches …
