Journalism + Commentary

TRIBUNE - With humor, the American novelist and screenwriter * explains the indifference and ignorance of his compatriots about the challenge Islamism has launched against France.

TRIBUNE - The American novelist and screenwriter paints a grim picture of his country's state after four years of Trumpism and predicts that the outgoing president will remain omnipresent in public debate.

America was founded by an austere religious sect for whom sex was anathema. America invokes God on both its coinage and paper money. In 1630, John Winthrop declared America to be “a city upon a hill,” gilded words that borrowed from the Sermon on the Mount and were famously echoed centuries later by Ronald Reagan. And yet the current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump, has appeared in not one but three softcore pornographic videos.

TRIBUNE - Le romancier et scénariste* américain Seth Greenland s’élève contre la censure qui s’abat sur Woody Allen dans un texte exclusif accordé au Figaro. L’autobiographie du cinéaste Soit dit en passant, qui sortira le 3 juin en France chez Stock, a été déprogrammée par Hachette aux États-Unis.

In a recent phone conversation during the ongoing time of our mutual confinement, my friend Tom asked whether I had seen David Simon’s new HBO adaptation of the Philip Roth novel The Plot Against America. Of course, I replied, Anything with a good budget and a lot of Jews and I’m there. Can you believe the way it reflects America today? he asked.

Art is primal. Necessary. Emerging from some deep, ineradicable human need, art has been an integral part of human society from the time humans sought shelter in caves.

The American writer Seth Greenland denounces, in a forum in the “World”, the setting in step of artistic creation in his country, summoned to follow well-thought precepts.

ON THE EVENING of January 6, 2015, in Paris, the journalist and cultural critic Philippe Lançon went to the theater to see Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with a female friend. 

Some years back, when the words “Mel Gibson” were still semi-respectable, I was having lunch with a writer friend who happens to be Jewish.

THE INTRACTABLE CONFLICT between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a problem about which everyone and her uncle has an opinion, often quite strongly held. Who is entitled to that fraught sliver of rock and desert?

After yesterday’s tragic events, when I remembered that I was going to be coming here tonight to talk about my book, the first reaction I had was: This is really not good timing.

In the middle of Hannah Gadsby’s provocative new Netflix stand-up comedy special, she launches into a diatribe against Pablo Picasso. To be clear: She really hates him.

Paul Simon was about to take the stage Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl when my 26-year-old daughter looked up from her phone: “Philip Roth died.”

BASKETBALL HAS ALWAYS, for me, transcended the idea of sport. Since I was a kid, it’s been a means of bonding on suburban courts, a window into black lives, a stage on which astonishing physical feats were transformed into moments of transcendent beauty. It was a perfect escape from homework, and then real work, and through immersion in it now it’s a means to postpone contemplation of anything unpleasant.

None of us choose our parents but we all choose our in-laws and if I had chosen mine more wisely my freedom wouldn’t hang in the balance.

When the guy driving the late-model Volvo with a “War Is Not the Answer” bumper sticker gave me the finger, I knew America had taken a wrong turn.

I HELD MY FATHER’S COPY of Mein Kampf in my hand wondering if it should be kept, donated, or set on fire in the backyard. Will the day arrive when I actually attempt to hack my way through Hitler’s turgid opus?