The New Republic

A dyspeptic friend, who earnestly dislikes The  New Yorker for its smug insularity, its tiny dada conceits passing as wit, its whimsy presented as serious politics, and its deadpan narratives masquerading as serious journalism, writes:I have had my suspicions about the vaunted New Yorker fact-checking department ever since I met a New Yorker fact checker at a dinner party several years ago. This fellow—a real individual, not a composite—regaled the gathering with tales of chartering airplanes to measure the distance between obscure Asian capitals, sending battalions of Sarah Lawrence girls to count the grains of sand on a particular beach referred to in an Ann Beattie story, and suchlike tales of heroic valor in the pursuit of perfect accuracy. After several hours of this (actually, one hour, 17 minutes, and 53 seconds), he turned to me with a polite smile and said, “Tell us about your fact-checking system at The New Republic.”I was editor of The New Republic at the time. I replied, “You’re looking at it.” READ MORE >>

Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction: Hawthorne to Faulkner Christian K. Messenger From the dawn of time, the "hero" seems always to have been an athlete. Gilgamesh outwrestling Enkidu to prove who was strongest in Uruk is by no means a unique example. Perhaps the only trait d'union between the heroes of the two great Homeric epics is their common respect for sport. And Greek mythology reads like a veritable roster of champions: Herakles, Pelops, Theseus, Hippolytus, and Atalanta to name a few. READ MORE >>

This article was originally published on November 26, 1930. READ MORE >>

The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom (Oxford University Press; $5.95) READ MORE >>

READ MORE >>

Sargent Shriver chose the Farmers Union convention in St. Paul as the stage from which to blow his first bugle in the war against poverty. READ MORE >>

The Adams Papers: Volumes I through IV, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams L. H. Butterfield, editor (Harvard; $30) The Papers of Alexander Hamilton: Volumes I and II Harold C. Syrett, editor (Columbia; $25) READ MORE >>

The fortunate few who can afford Fortune were treated in the November issue to an essay by John Chamberlain on "The Businessman in Fiction." Preaching in Henry Luce's tabernacle for the already converted, Chamberlain made a fervent plea for faith in the businessman not only as the source from whom all our blessings flow, but also as a beneficent force in the culture and an admirable family man and community-conscious citizen who has been treated villainously by the ingrate novelists. READ MORE >>

Like the older Republicans and Democrats, the young third party is more than mass meetings and platform speeches. It also has top strategists and potent local leaders whose differences must be reconciled off-stage:   READ MORE >>

I read of blunders and bigotries, of catastrophic acts of blind ignorance, of the incredible bungling of statesmen and those in high places and then my jaundiced eye, arrived at the sporting page, brightens. It falls upon a name in a column of names. "E. Collins, 2b," reads the heartening box-score, "a. b.-4, h.-3, 0.-2, a.-3, e.-0." READ MORE >>