Susan Sontag, the celebrated novelist, essayist and critic who has been a major force in American intellectual life for four decades, will be discussing her work with students and faculty in a series of events today. Her latest book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” which also serves as the title of her lecture in Graham Chapel, explores the emotions-sympathy, rage, indifference-elicited by images of violence and suffering.
On the morning of January 16, 1991, at the height of the first Gulf Crisis, the White House called each of the major American news organizations with the message, “Everyone’s fine at home, but the kids have the sniffles.” For the few Western journalists still in Baghdad, on the wrong side of George H.W. Bush’s “line in the sand,” the meaning of the code words was clear: the promised American attack on Iraq was going to begin that night.
Ken Carroll has been traveling on foot for 146 days, but he doesn’t show it. His bright-red thermal shirt is clean, and his auburn hair pulled back into a neat ponytail beneath his cowboy hat. A hand-painted message on the hood of his backpack readswww.peacewalker.
The staff editorial on Jan. 31 which claimed that “drafting Americans is never the answer” was wrong, na‹ve, and disturbingly oblivious to the real issues about the impending war with Iraq. First of all, it should be obvious to anyone who took fifth grade history why the editorial’s premise was wrong: a draft of American citizens was, of course, the only answer to an Allied victory in World War II.
THURSDAY
Art Lecture
Yve Alain-Bois, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. professor of modern art, Harvard
University.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History and Archaeology
For information call 314-935-4523
Holmes Jazz Series
Tom Byrne, guitar.
Holmes Lounge
8-10 p.
A Guy Thing
Paul (Jason Lee) runs into some trouble when he ends up in bed with his fianc‚’s cousin Becky (Julia Stiles) after his bachelor party. Hijinx ensue as he scrambles to cover up the truth. Half-hearted romantic comedy from the writer of Meet The Parents.
“What’s he doing?” Kate Eastwood asks with a grin, but also a tinge of anxiety. With her knitted sweater and sandy brown hair, Eastwood looks at least as much like a soccer mom as the general manager of a performing arts organization, but in this case her maternal disapproval is entirely appropriate.
Dear Lucky,
My boyfriend gives really great head. But I have a hard time getting to the point where I can have an orgasm. It’s not him – I’ve always had this problem. To get myself to come I have to close my eyes and fantasize about something else. Not someone else, mind you, but a different scenario, usually involving physical force or aggression.
It’s unfortunate that Jonathan Franzen is such a curmudgeon, because he’s also a terrific writer. His new collection of essays, “How To Be Alone,” foregrounds his talent for pointed observations and grumbled asides–in one essay he calls the media coverage of the first Gulf War “a thousand-hour infomercial for high technology”–that capture, and help to temper the often inscrutable spectacle of American media, politics, and culture.
Since September 11, Republicans and Democrats alike have admitted that the U.S. should reduce its dependence on oil coming from the Persian Gulf. But since the attacks, President Bush and a divided Congress have barely budged from the dangerous status quo.
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