What Fire Teaches About What Survives

What Fire Teaches About What Survives

London, September 1940The German bombing has been continuous since September 7th. Last night the fires in the East End were visible from here, orange against low clouds, the kind of light that makes the city look like something from the industrial paintings that Dore...
The Most Accurate Thing I Have Seen on Canvas

The Most Accurate Thing I Have Seen on Canvas

Paris, June 1937Guernica is hanging at the Spanish Pavilion of the International Exposition on the Champ de Mars. I stood in front of it for two hours today. I have been in enough wars to have personal reference points for what this painting documents.Picasso has not...
The Geometry of Violence

The Geometry of Violence

Various, consolidatedI want to say something specific about war, because I have been in enough of them to have a basis for the observation that is not theoretical.The reasons given for wars change. The configuration of the wars does not change as much as the changing...