Brendan Bernhard

DISH and Dat

Brendan Bernhard
If the president appeared on The Charlie Rose Show, would he be received as warmly as the average media titan? I doubt it. In the hierarchy of Charlie‘s guests, those who stuff our entertainment pipelines with goodies reign supreme. As the latest supernova to blaze into the Murdoch-Eisner-Bertelsmann-AOLTime-Warner galaxy, Jean-Marie......

Portrait of a Dinosaur

Brendan Bernhard
Cezanne once told a young painter who said he didn’t know what to paint to go paint the drainpipe in his kitchen. On its face, an old manual typewriter isn‘t much more promising as material for a painting than a drainpipe (even if the typewriter belongs to Paul Auster), but......
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Old World, New World

Brendan Bernhard
COLLECTED STORIES | By SAUL BELLOW | Viking Press | 442 pages | $30 hardcover There’s a wonderful story in Saul Bellow‘s Collected Stories. It’s about a circus elephant that has been hired by a Chicago department store in an effort to increase sales in its toy section. The elephant......
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Sex Tours and Terrorism

Brendan Bernhard
How’s this for a coincidence? It’s the morning of September 11, 2001, and you’re sitting in your Manhattan apartment leafing through the culture section of The New York Times. In a few minutes, the passenger jet will be reinvented as a missile by Arab terrorists and thousands of people will......
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What Is Compassion?

Brendan Bernhard
Monica Seles’ derriere was wiggling under a starched white skirt. Leaning forward to receive serve, her entire body quivered with anticipation, like a cat about to pounce on an unsuspecting bird. She was playing Serena Williams on a cool evening in Manhattan Beach this summer, and the match was a......

The Blair White House Project

Brendan Bernhard
The English attitude to Tony Blair’s stratospheric rise to virtual world leadership is one of skeptical admiration. Naturally, the Brits are proud of the way their prime minister has effortlessly assumed verbal if not military command of a dangerous situation, but there is also a sense that he may be......
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Poetry Among the Ruins

Brendan Bernhard
What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Larkin, a reclusive and fiercely unfashionable British poet whose work resonates deeply with readers, was referred to only a few......

Angst & Aquavit

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Max Gerber LEONARD COHEN IS THE ULTIMATE CROSSOVER ARTIST. A SINGER WHO published two novels and four books of poetry before he ever set foot in a recording studio, he exchanged the old, adult realm of the printed word for the brave new electronic youth culture that arose......

The Economic Divide

Brendan Bernhard
Consumer purchases, Robert Reich said on television early Friday morning, account for two-thirds of the American economy. So it’s no wonder that Mayor Giuliani has urged New Yorkers to go about business as usual. It‘s not simply to thumb a nose at the terrorists or to buck up the city’s......

Scene From the Underworld

Brendan Bernhard
The morning felt bright and unreal, so far from Manhattan as to belong to another country — one you couldn’t even fly to anymore. The garbage men came by on their usual rounds. They knew what had happened, and they looked ordinarily cheerful. A neighbor stumbled out of his apartment,......