Parker Bauer is a writer who contributed essays and cultural criticism to The Weekly Standard between 2013 and 2017. His pieces for the magazine frequently explored literary subjects, book reviews, and cultural commentary, covering figures ranging from Jack London to Jane Goodall.
Midway through the remarkable new documentary Jane comes a scene that could stand for its whole improbable story. Twenty-something Jane Goodall, not yet a credentialed scientist but doing the work of several, sits with a telescope on the floor of an African forest watching chimpanzees in a tree,…
In January 1944 the up-and-coming novelist Vladimir Nabokov sent the oracular literary critic Edmund Wilson a letter, with two enclosures. The first was a sample of Nabokov's new translation of the Russian verse novel Eugene Onegin; the second was a pair of socks Wilson had lent him. The…
J. M. Coetzee is a singular case. Born in South Africa, he grew up there and has dilated on his childhood near Cape Town and on his uncle's farm in several autobiographical works. He won expansive praise for his early novels philosophizing on racial intolerance in his native country, then got the…
J. M. Coetzee is a singular case. Born in South Africa, he grew up there and has dilated on his childhood near Cape Town and on his uncle’s farm in several autobiographical works. He won expansive praise for his early novels philosophizing on racial intolerance in his native country, then got the…
Historically, we’ve had witchcraft, priestcraft, warcraft, and occasionally a spot of statecraft. Today, we have craft beers in corner bars and craft talks at conclaves of writers around the country. Craft is mellowing with age.
You might imagine, consulting some eminent minds, that the whole point of imagination is happiness. "Imagination cannot make fools wise," wrote Pascal, "but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable." Samuel Johnson took the point but drew a different…
You might imagine, consulting some eminent minds, that the whole point of imagination is happiness. "Imagination cannot make fools wise," wrote Pascal, "but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable." Samuel Johnson took the point but drew a different…
When in doubt, confess. In grade school, assigned to write a theme demonstrating colorful language, I swung into action and, only a few lines in, let flow from my pencil this satisfyingly cynical simile: "a laughter as mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx." The words all but begged to be written.…
When in doubt, confess. In grade school, assigned to write a theme demonstrating colorful language, I swung into action and, only a few lines in, let flow from my pencil this satisfyingly cynical simile: “a laughter as mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx." The words all but begged to be written.…
Atlanta
All fiction, it’s been said, boils down to two plots: Either a stranger comes to town or someone goes on a trip. Gatsby lands on Long Island, drawn like a luna moth to Daisy’s green light. Huck and Jim raft away in an idyll of racial amity that today seems, in a term dear to Mark Twain, a…
You get the sense, reading this off-kilter collection of stories, that somewhere in the background, jazz is playing. Bop, probably. The plotlines and patter of the characters tootle off every which way, high and low, with now and then a nod to the theme. Sometimes (as in the sax work of Coleman…