Gregory Hayes, in Hu-The Mozart Myth manities (Mar.-Apr. 1991), National Endowment for the Hu-
rnanities, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C.
In the Oscar-winning 1984 film Amadeus, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1 756-9 1) was made out to be a silly genius, in dramatic contrast to his rival Antonio Salieri, a pi- ous mediocrity. The portrayal, writes Hayes, a pianist and harpsichordist, was only the latest variant of the mythic Mo- zart, a popular creation that has overshad- owed the man...
Robert Kenner, in ~rt& An-tiques (Mar. 1991), Art & Antiques Associates, 89 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10003.
Dutch painter Piet Mondrian's abstract ar- rangements of right angles and primary colors can be seen on everything from bedsheets to bathroom tiles. But Mondrian (1 872-1 944) himself remains a somewhat mysterious figure. Art historians have por- trayed him as having made an orderly ar- tistic progression from landscape painter to grid maker, but to tidily portray him thus, says...
Scholar (Spring 1991), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C.
20009.
The financier was one of the large figures of the 19th-century novel. In his savage sat- ire, The Way We Live Now (1874-75), for example, Anthony Trollope tells of the sud- den rise of financial speculator Augustus
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Melmotte, a "hollow vulgar fraud" whom a corrupt society chooses to venerate, and of his fall after being unmasked at the height of his success. Today, observes Princeton historian James,...
picted," James says. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gats(1925), bond traders fre- quently appear-but "we never under-stand what they do or how they do it."
The main reason for the decline of the financier novel, however, lies elsewhere. "The classic format was concerned with change and with the decline of an old standard of behavior," James says. "The fi-nancier becomes a scourge to punish the greed and immorality of an old elite that can no longer remain...
taking over the government."
Just before the 1989 coup attempt, Eduardo Cojuang- co, an influential and wealthy crony of Marcos,
if they have repented of their offenses," Land6 says. "But indiscriminate forgive- ness of those who, having plotted against the state, show no remorse and make clear their intention to repeat their offenses at their first opportunity, is hardly in the pub- lic interest." After the first (July 1986) mili- tary coup attempt against Aquino failed, the...
surprise by
the June 1989 massacre in
Tiananmen Square. And af-
ter obligatory denuncia-
tions of the "barbaric" lead-
ership in Beijing, Taipei
then continued on its new course.
Since Tiananmen, the au- thorities in Beijing have been unable to regain con- trol over China's economy, and there have been reports of widespread disaffection among members of the Peo- ple's Liberation Army. "Should the political lead- ership in Beijing lose con- trol not only of the econ-omy but...
Rich-ard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky, in Presidential Studies ~uarterl~ (Winter 1991), Center for the Study of the Presidency, 208 E. 75th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Historians have been playing the game of grading the presidents ever since 1948, when Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., asked a panel of colleagues to award them all A's (great), B's (near-great), and so on, down to the ignominious E's (failure). No stand- ards of evaluation were specified, how- ever, and the criteria of later surveys often f...
Dwight Eisenhower. Jackson solved the dilemma justifying presiden- tial activism "in the name of limiting the activities of hierarchical institutions," such as the "monster" National Bank of the United States.
Although Ellis and Wildavsky give the modem presidents no formal grades, they do note that the performances by chief ex- ecutives in recent decades have provided grounds for praise as well as criticism. "Reports of failed presidencies have risen along with egalitarian...
Paul E. Peter-Isn't That Special? son, in Political Science Quarterly (Winter 1990-91), Academy of Political Science, 475 Riverside Dr., Ste. 1274, New York,
N.Y. 10115-0012.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986, which elimi- nated a host of valuable tax loopholes, rep- resented a defeat of the special interests that many analysts thought would never happen. Can it be that special interests have lost much of their renowned influ- ence in Washington? Exactly, argues Pe- terson, a Harvard political scientist....
this standard, for example, retirees are not a special interest.
To estimate the influence of special in- terests, Peterson measures the percentage of the gross national product (GNP) spent the federal government on activities "not of paramount interest" to the two ma- jor political parties. That means all federal outlays not spent on the public debt, de- fense, benefits for the elderly, "safety net" programs for the poor, and agricultural subsidies important to the farm states...