No play as important, as interesting as Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy has been shown for a very long time—and no play as interesting in an important way. I would insist, too, that the importance of the work is due not …
It was Susan Sontag, I think, who first pointed up the extreme theatricality of Marat/Sade. Susan Sontag was right, Marat/Sade is theatrical. Is the play dramatic, though? About this there seems to be some question in even Miss Sontag’s mind. …
Dear Sartre: May I take public issue with you for the claims you make in “What is Literature?” You claim literary importance, even preeminence, for socially committed, or “responsible” writing; you claim also that anyone who happens to be unprejudiced …
I want to take up here two difficult and related matters, forced on the attention of some of us at the outset of the Second World War, matters which, from the spring of 1940, we found we would have to …
The two replies to my piece on Lyndon LaRouche, one by Mr. LaRouche himself, the other by Lewis Coser, are on about the same intellectual level: both writers evidently prefer name-calling to reasoned argument. I must add here that Lewis …
Lyndon LaRouche, whatever one thinks of his politics, has at least brought a modicum of excitement to the political scene. John Anderson, who recently gained such wide support, is only new as a candidate for the presidency; his opinions, except …
I was reading Antigone when I was told of Harold Rosenberg’s death, and the sadness of the event has merged in my mind with some of the sadness of the play. I keep thinking of a remark made by Antigone that is not only …
There’s no law that says that I, wishing to restrain another from tyranny and cruelty, should practice them myself . . . —From Calderón’s Life Is a Dream It is now being said everywhere that anti-Communism was in the main responsible …
We are living in a period of nihilism, of cultural nihilism—no doubt there are many who would prefer to describe it as one of cultural revolution, of cultural change. But many of those who prefer the word revolution are also …
First of all I must grant Art Efron something, for there is one matter on which he is partly right—not really right, not meaningfully right, not even half right—but however pointlessly, he is, in any case, partly right. I make …
To an audience of Parisians, in 1950, Bertrand Russell insisted that the philosophy of Hegel (which he had always said he could not understand) was responsible for German fascism: it was Hegel, not Gobineau, Haeckel, or Stewart Chamberlain who had …
It is a pleasure to be commended by George P. Elliot,* whose style is quite as good when he praises as when he is finding fault. Elliot finds this fault in my Maratl Sade piece: I went too far, he …
It was Susan Sontag, I think, who first pointed up the extreme theatricality of Marat/Sade. Susan Sontag was right, Marat/Sade is theatrical. Is the play dramatic, though? About this there seems to be some question in even Miss Sontag’s mind. …
Dear Sartre: May I take public issue with you for the claims you make in What is Literature? You claim literary importance, even preeminence, for socially committed, or “responsible” writing; you claim also that anyone who happens to be unprejudiced …
Dear Sartre: May I take public issue with you for the claims you make in What is Literature? You claim literary importance, even preeminence, for socially committed, or “responsible” writing; you claim also that anyone who happens to be unprejudiced …
