Since my last post on the pampered American bottom elicited so many mature and thoughtful responses, I thought I’d move up the body a little and raise the topic of female arms — in particular, Michelle Obama’s arms. Mind you, this is my territory. I’ve spent much of my life studying Western art, and Western art pays a lot of attention to arms, legs, buttocks, torsos, breasts, faces, the place between the legs, and all the rest of the human body.

Mrs. Obama’s fondness for sleeveless dresses has sent fashionistas into a frenzy of excitement (doing whatever it is they do) for several months now, and bloggers and columnists have been having verbal spasms over what constitutes appropriate dress for a First Lady. Last Saturday, Maureen Dowd, in her column in The New York Times brought up the subject. After...

In an earlier post, I mentioned that trees were annoyed with me for not switching from books to Kindle 2. I added that they also would like for me and every other American to switch to coarser toilet paper. At the time, I didn’t think I could tackle what is actually an extremely serious issue — the way Americans regard toilet paper—without resorting to juvenile jokes. But as the saying goes, if not me, who, and if not now, when? (By the way, even though it took a couple of days and some hard thinking, I’m saving my money to purchase the new Kindle.)

But back to toilet paper. What’s up with the pampered American bottom, anyway? How’d we evolve from brave men and women on the frontier — happy to get hold of some leaves and old corn husks— to a people who Need (with a capital “N”) Charmin or Cottonelle? (Don’t you just love the names?)

Ninety-eight percent of Americans...

Fair Warning: If you think contemporary art is a crock to begin with, don’t bother reading this post.

I never thought that contemporary art could look out of date, but the art at this year’s New York Armory Show, which closed yesterday after a five-day run, proved me wrong.

Mind you, part of my feeling that the art in this year’s fair was flaccid and enervated comes from the background noise of the recession. Who, in these gloomy economic times, can look at anything without that cloud entering their field of vision? Despite the dreadful economy, however, art fairs dedicated to contemporary art are not giving up. There are nearly a hundred scheduled for the year, in just about every major city in the world. If you consider the smaller fairs that sprout up...

It is a handsome fella.

I’m almost there. I turned my nose up at the first Kindle, finding it cramped, clunky and hard on the eyes — especially when pages “turned.” But Kindle 2 is a sleek little thing (10 ounces — less than most paperbacks). It’s almost as cool looking as a 1930s cigarette case.

For $359 (not cheap), Kindle 2 seems to offer readers just about everything. You can download books in less than 60 seconds (since it works like a cell, and isn’t hunting for Wi-Fi, you can do it just about any time or anyplace). You can read your newspapers, magazines, and blogs. You can leap to a dictionary, or, should you have a sudden urge to learn about Ming Dynasty vases, or the history of outcomes assessment, you can jump to Wikipedia. (How did those of us who grew up in the olden days ever manage to read uninterrupted narratives?). You can even “make notes” and keep “marginalia”...

This week’s New Yorker is publishing an excerpt from an unfinished and unpublished novel, The Pale King, left behind by the late David Foster Wallace, along with an essay on Wallace by D.T. Max. Wallace is most famous for his novel Infinite Jest, and when he committed suicide last September, many hearts grieved. His previous novels were deeply admired by young and old, literary specialists and regular readers alike. The author wrestled with the easy solipsism that enslaves most of us, striving to find a way to see ordinary things and ordinary people with generosity. All the while, it turns out, he was facing his own terrible depression.

My daughter, choking back tears, called me the morning she heard that Wallace had committed suicide. Like many other 2005 Kenyon graduates, she had been...

This week’s The New Yorker is publishing an excerpt from an unpublished novel, The Pale King, left behind by the late David Foster Wallace, along with an essay on Wallace by D.T. Max. Wallace is most famous for his novel Infinite Jest, and when he committed suicide last September, many hearts grieved. His previous novels were deeply admired by young and old, literary specialists and regular readers alike. The author struggled to live a life of conscious reflection and self-control, where an individual chooses to break out of the easy solipsism that naturally enslaves us and look at fellow human beings with generosity. All the while, it turns out, he was facing his own terrible depression.

My daughter called me in the morning as soon as she heard that Wallace had committed suicide. Like...

It happens to me all the time. I’ll be in the middle of a perfectly intelligent conversation with a college-educated person who graduated from a reputable college. We’ll be talking about something serious, like whether or not our country should aim for 60 percent of the population holding “high quality” 2 or 4-year college degrees. Suddenly, without warning, that person will interrupt to ask, “What’s your sign?” I’ll be nonplussed. Inside, I’m saying, “This person has a college degree?” Outside, not wanting to be rude, I’ll give the straight answer. “Aries,” I’ll say. Half the time the response is, “Ah, I knew it!” The other half it’s, “Hmmm. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

On occasion — as a form of entertainment coupled with genuine curiosity — I’ve tried pursuing the topic of astrology’s merit by asking such questions as, “Do you really believe that stuff?” or, more...

Uh-oh. Blogger grammar-grannies have been scolding Obama for frequently using the pronoun “I” when he should be using “me” — as in the phrase, “a very personal decision for Michelle and I.” Now Obama’s been grammar-outed in the mainstream media.

In an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, authors Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman point out that fussing over the distinction between “I” and “me” showed up only in the mid-19th century — probably, they say, because of grammarians who knew Latin. Obama isn’t the only president to use the pronoun “I” when he should be using “me.” President Clinton opted for, “Invited Hillary and I,” and Bush liked “for Laura and I.”

Even so, the authors gently chide Obama, saying “an educated speaker is expected to keep his pronouns in line.” Then...

Now that the Oscars are over, how about considering a small film, untainted by any glamour whatsoever. Morgan Dews’s documentary Must Read After My Death, which opened this past Friday in New York and Los Angeles, is a real-life version of Hollywood’s “Revolutionary Road.” Both movies hit hard at the myth of the sunny ’50s.

In its reliance on homemade movies, Dews’s film is also reminiscent of Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans (2004). Dews’s film, however, has no single narrator, strictly confining itself to pieced-together audio recordings, home movies and old photographs that Dews’s grandmother Allis left behind when she died in 2001, at the age of 90. They were found with a note that said, “Must Read After My Death.”

The voices of Allis, her husband Charley, and their four children — one of whom was Dews’s mother — provide the narration for the film. Allis clearly took...

Remember Lake Wobegon? It’s the make-believe town Garrison Keillor made famous where “all the children are above average.” Stupid me. How did I miss it? Here I thought it was a dying little place, when it turns out it’s grown into an enormous city.

Today’s New York Times has an article quoting several college professors talking about the problem of “academic entitlement” — where students think that by merely showing up in class they’re “above average” (meaning they think the default grade for their academic performance is “B” or even “A”). Most college professors know these students all too well. They come to you with big, pitiably wet eyes, uttering the dreaded words, “I tried.”

Whether academic entitlement (AE — I never knew until now that it has its own acronym) derives from parental coddling,...