John Rosenthal

Apocalypse Later

Turning The Vietnam War Into A Cartoon Lets Everyone Off The Hook

Years ago I read an essay by Hannah Arendt in which she said that the Nuremburg trials were necessary because they assigned responsibility for crimes to people who, in fact, had the responsibility not to commit them. Her concept was that if one declared everybody in Germany guilty, then no one was guilty — guilt became a condition of being, or something connected to the stars, a notion antipathetic to anyone interested in establishing a little decency on earth.

Photographs: Circles, Corners, Grand Central

The photographs in this selection are available as a PDF only. Click here to download.

The Arts: The Politics Of Filmmaking

In the course of reading a book we have time to change our mind about things, or anyway, the author has time to change our minds. But seeing a film is different. Not only the brevity of the event, but the limited intellectual possibilities of the medium itself make it almost impossible for a filmmaker to challenge (uproot, enlighten, deepen?) the filmgoer’s attitude about the way things are.

Reflections On Re-Reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot

Book Review

Reading The Idiot again after five years I am struck by what does not fit into the usual critical categories, a certain kind of truth in the writing, the erratic unnameable of vision. I begin to see there is no proper category for the vivid, an impulse to reveal, an edging toward light.