Articles by Benj DeMott

First thanks the author for allowing us to reprint this piece which was originally posted at Bernard Avishai Dot Com. Not long after Philip Roth published Portnoy’s Complaint, Jacqueline Susann went on the Johnny Carson show. Susann, we remember, had become famous for her pulp novel Valley of the Dolls, which triangulated, in what seemed … Read more

Pride will vanish and glory will rot But virtue lives and cannot be forgot Peter Wood’s amazingly graceful little book, Near Andersonville, tells how a Winslow Homer painting of an African American slave woman was lost to history and then found. In an act of imagination that’s worthy of the painter’s, Wood gently brings home … Read more

In The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (2008), the distinguished American historian Gordon Wood warns against the distortions of reading the present into the past or seeing the present as an inevitable outcome of events in the past. At the same time, he knows that present-mindedness is not entirely avoidable. … Read more

Two weeks ago, the author sent First this commentary on the state of boxing. Last night, HBO aired the best thing it has shown all year: a live broadcast of a middleweight championship boxing match between champion Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez and Paul “The Punisher” Williams. Both are widely regarded as two of the top five … Read more

Michael Berube, The Left at War, New York University Press The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, Semiotexte Tom McDonough, ed., The Situationists and the City, Verso The three works under consideration here – the first, a survey of assorted leftist interventions from the past couple of decades, the second, a political sensation from a couple … Read more

Tony Judt lost his courageous battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Shortly before his death, he appeared on the Charlie Rose program, strapped to a chair, speaking through an enabling device with astonishing force and clarity on a wide range of subjects. I can’t imagine anyone, whether critic or admirer, unmoved by the scene. Judt was … Read more

Politics in the United States and Great Britain are again marked by intense hostility toward the expanded role of modern liberal states. Since most opponents of public investment are simultaneously enthusiastic consumers of many of its results—for example, public education—the feebleness of most defenses of public investment is usually hard to understand. But not always, … Read more