Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday 29 January 2013


The New York Review of Books
SUBSCRIBE AND SAVETHIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
This week on nybooks.com: Editors vs. writers, Batman vs. Koolhaas, men vs. wolves. Plus the British Mandate in Palestine, the art of dreaming, Jordan’s elections, and life at the Review circa 1989.
MANDATORY READING

Palestine: How Bad, & Good, Was British Rule?

Avishai Margalit

The British rule over Palestine lasted roughly thirty years, from 1917 until 1948. In a country that has three thousand years of recorded history, thirty years is a tiny fraction. If we conceive of three thousand years on a scale of one day, the period of British rule takes barely eight minutes. Yet the influence of these thirty years was deep and wide-ranging.
ONEIROLOGY

Dreams I’ve Had (and Some I Haven’t)

Charles Simic

The most interesting dreams to my mind have no obvious subject matter. They are like turning on the TV late at night and coming upon a scene from an old black and white film one has most likely never seen, though it seems vaguely familiar.
ELECTIONS AND PROTEST

Jordan: Democracy Delayed

Nicolas Pelham

A new law that was supposed to make last week’s election more democratic has left the kingdom’s carefully choreographed political system largely unchanged. The king’s advisers hope an influx of foreign cash will help stave off social discontent, and that a new parliament will further divide the opposition.
COMICS

Batman vs. Koolhaas

Martin Filler

Among architectural insiders, Batman is likely to cause the most comment for its scathing portrayal of a Netherlandish master builder named Kem Roomhaus, who, as Batman says, “may be an affected, narcissistic creep, but he’s also a genius.”
WRITING

In Praise of the Language Police

Tim Parks

We want to think of our writers as geniuses occupying positions of absolute independence in relation to a tediously conventional society. Conversely, we abhor, or believe we abhor, the standard and the commonplace. Yet nobody requires the existence of a standard and a general pressure to conform more than the person who wishes to assume a position outside it.
EXTERMINATION

The Lost Wolves of New England

Christopher Benfey

The lost wolves of New England have been on my mind lately, as winter settles into the woods below our house and the lives of the local predators—the hawks and owls and the raucous coyotes—are increasingly exposed among the bare-leafed trees. Wolves have not been welcome in our woods for a very long time.
EVENT

Celebrating 50 Years of The New York Review

This is the last week to get your tickets to our big celebration at the Town Hall next Tuesday. If you’re going to the event and would be interested in being featured in a forthcoming series of subscriber profiles, please email us at newsletters@nybooks.com.
FILM

New Yawk New Wave

New York’s scrappy, streetwise, pre-indie, off-Hollywood films
LECTURE

Victor Serge and Russia

Biographer Richard Greeman on the novelist’s family background
RALLY

Students for Gun Control

“We think that there is no better time to express our sadness and our disgust.”
ALSO IN THE CALENDAR
Daniel Mendelsohn at the Morgan Library, Japanese underground cinema, a new branch of the Louvre, an Iranian version of Argo, Gordon Parks’s “A Harlem Family,” a performance of Raymond Kennedy’s Ride a Cockhorse, a forum on Islamaphobia, and more in our calendar
REMINISCENCE

Rude Mechanicals

Revan Schendler

When I think of the focused efforts that led nowhere, and the gifts that have fallen in my lap, I have to resist discerning a pattern. I was sleeping on a friend’s floor in New Orleans, running from a heavy heart, when Barbara Epstein offered me a job as assistant editor at the Review. It was the spring of 1989; I was twenty-four.