Ralph De Toledano

Latest by Ralph De Toledano in Chronicles

• Blog

  April 12, 2018

  Professor Burnham, Mafioso Costello, and Me

  Not long after the conviction of Alger Hiss, Professor James Burnham, Karl Hess, and I met in my apartment on Riverside Drive to discuss a matter that had concerned us for some time.

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• Vital Signs

  February 1997

  John O'Hara and American Conservatism

  I have more than a suspicion that John O'Hara's novels and stories will persist, if only because they have something to say about the commedia that is life and death, and his record of what part of America was like in the 20th century, even after we are into the 21st.

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• Vital Signs

  September 1996

  Remembering Casals

  Talking to musicians or composers has its values, but it seldom adds much to what we know of music. Mozart's letters to his father give you a few insights into the creative process, but Beethoven's are merely a peep into his psyche.

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• Vital Signs

  July 1996

  Conrad Aiken

  I was to meet Cap Pearce at his office at 12:30, for discussion of a book contract and for one of our lunches at a small Italian restaurant in the East Thirties where the veal scallopini was well pounded and the wine muscular.

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• Vital Signs

  June 1995

  Erato in the Throes

  The poet has been rejected by our civilization, because that civilization is no longer at ease with itself and spends its time rubbing camphor on a rheumy chest, while it contemplates its navel.

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• View

  February 1995

  The Russo-German Symbiosis in the First and Second World Wars

  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Leninist forces within the empire, hosannas have rung out in the Western world. "The Cold War is over, the Cold War is over," the leaders of the West have exclaimed, and demands to turn swords into knitting needles have filled the air.

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• Vital Signs

  December 1994

  James Branch Cabell

  In a 1956 essay, Edmund Wilson wrote: "Cabell is out of fashion." Withdrawing his dismissal of James Branch Cabell, Wilson gave him a critical accolade—and his generosity was praiseworthy.

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• Vital Signs

  October 1994

  Professor Burnham, Mafioso Costello, and Me

  Not long after the conviction of Alger Hiss, Professor James Burnham, Karl Hess, and I met in my apartment on Riverside Drive to discuss a matter that had concerned us for some time.

  Read More

• Vital Signs

  January 1992

  My Aunt & Unamuno

  In the summer of 1929, my aunt Zarita Nahon, a philologist and teacher of languages, traveled from Biarritz to Hendaye, en route to Tangier to collect the medieval Spanish balladry, lost in Spain but still extant in the coastal cities of Morocco, for the anthropologist Franz Boas.

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