READERS OF DISSENT will know Edouard Roditi as an occasional contributor on Islamic problems. Others will remember him as an American poet and critic of literature and art. Born in Paris of an American family that has resided there for …
Down on the farm, as Stanford University’s campus is sometimes called, an atmosphere of the leisurely past is carefully cultivated. The campus itself, sprawling across acres of precious Peninsula real estate, seems to argue for days gone by when a …
“Fascism returns in Europe; generals in France, bishops in Italy.” So, a few days before May 25, the radical and anti-clerical weekly L’Espresso summarized the mood which characterized the last week of the election campaign. The election results confirmed this …
Reflections on Literature as a Minor Art I am setting down the following melancholy reflections not with any hope of a remedy, but because the matter is important and nobody else seems to be saying it. In many ways literature …
GHANA, by Kwame Nkrumah. On March 6, 1957, the former colony of the Gold Coast became an independent nation within the British Commonwealth and took the name of Ghana, thereby recalling a West African empire of medieval times. The leader …
THE QUESTION, by Henri Alleg. Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated from the French by John Calder. As one among many thousands, Henri Alleg describes the tortures he underwent at the hands of the 10th Paratroop division in Algeria. Tortures of …
AMERICA AS A CIVILIZATION, by Max Lerner. This book is disappointingly bland and inconclusive, an exhaustive balance sheet of American assets and liabilities. As in financial balance sheets, some mysterious alchemy equalizes the two sides; unlike the financial statement, Lerner …
The story is told by Steward Meacham of the American Friends Service Committee of how a small shirt factory in Western Pennsylvania was struck by its women employees, of how the company threatened to move its machinery, and of how, …
Cancer is the twentieth century disease. If not in scientific fact, then surely in the fear-ridden depths of our imagination, cancer seems to be the special nemesis of our age. President Eisenhower’s politically dramatic heart attack created a journalistic image …
Every dawn from the minarets of the Arab World comes the call to prayer: “Come to pray, come to your self-betterment.” Of late, the second part of the call, the appeal to self-betterment, is receiving a great response. People are …
Even a few months ago, a foreign intellectual passing through Cairo and interested in meeting the city’s intellectuals, would have been introduced to people whom the war at one stroke deprived of all meaning to the country. Ten to one, …
In no sense do these notes pretend to the blessed adjective “definitive.” They are based on impressions derived from observations, conversations, interviews, meetings, and a little reading during a six weeks’ trip in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. …
The main question Mr. Rogow sets out to answer is whether the British Labor Party, when in power, was able to influence significantly the structure, psychology, and objectives of British industry. The author has selected an area for analysis in …
The eternalization of the present is a recurrent characteristic of conservative thought: the insistence that what is exhausts what can be. It is striking that this notion should characterize C. A. R. Crosland’s The Future of Socialism, a systematic attempt …
The commercial practices of the entertainment industry certainly constitute one of the most ominous aspects of the present cultural crisis; but really it is not so much the commercialization of artproduction which is so novel and important for contemporary interpretation; …
