William Tyndale and the English Language, by David Crystal (Bodleian Library Publishing): In this magazine’s October 2025 issue, to mark the five hundredth anniversary of William Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible, Joseph Loconte wrote about the “incalculable” impact of that achievement on Western politics and society, calling it “the cultural equivalent of the splitting of the atom.” Now, a new book by the esteemed linguist David Crystal homes in on Tyndale’s lexical legacy, taking stock of the great author and translator’s methods, borrowings, and coinages, as well as quantifying the impact his Bible had on the King James and later translations. Here is a brick-by-brick examination of a towering edifice. —RE
“In Alignment: Dana Gordon and Rick Klauber,” at Helm Contemporary (through March 21): “In Alignment” is the appropriate title for the latest exhibition at Helm Contemporary. Pairing paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the New Criterion contributor Dana Gordon and Rick Klauber, the Lower East Side show aligns the structure and gesture of the two artists in evocative ways. Working with the meander patterns of religious architecture (one of his earlier paintings here is called “Shul”), Gordon scrapes down spirals to mesmerizing effect. Klauber, meanwhile, finds his geometry and edge in lumberyard shingles, which he paints and layers into wall reliefs. Together in this wide-ranging selection of a dozen works, the veteran abstractionists reveal the shimmering possibilities of color, line, and pattern. —JP
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, directed by Joe Mantello, at Winter Garden Theater (now in previews, opening April 9): The last time that Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was on Broadway, Kyle Smith wrote in these pages that the play fails “as an indictment of capitalism, or business, or America” but derives its power from “Miller’s fine sense of tortured family mechanics.” A sparse new production of Salesman, directed by Joe Mantello, brings out those twisted family dynamics to devastating effect. While Nathan Lane is a reliably erratic Willy Loman, Laurie Metcalf steals the show with a powerhouse performance as Linda. Playing by Aristotle’s rules for impactful drama, Salesman inexorably builds up to its cathartic climax as the walls close in on the Lomans, who only too late begin to heed the Delphic maxim gnōthi seauton (know yourself). —AG
“Book and Dagger: How Academics Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II,” with Elyse Graham, at the Neue Galerie (March 19): Weedy and tweedy or strident and shrill—these are the tropes surrounding contemporary academics. But it was not always thus. In a lecture on March 19 at the Neue Galerie, Elyse Graham—drawing on her 2024 publication Book and Dagger—will tell of how the OSS, the intelligence agency founded during World War II and the precursor to the CIA, was initially staffed by academics, who obviously did not adhere to the stereotypes mentioned above. —BR
TNC Events:
Piano evening with Ignat Solzhenitsyn
Thursday, March 19
If you have not already, become a member of the Friends and Young Friends of The New Criterion here.
Dispatch:
“Beethoven alive,” by Jay Nordlinger. On a concert of the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.
By the Editors:
“Can Trump defeat Senate Republicans over the SAVE Act?”
Roger Kimball, The Spectator World
From the Archives:
“Simone Weil, a saint for our time?” by Jillian Becker (March 2002). On Simone Weil, by Francine du Plessix Gray.
