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February 22, 2019
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Natalie Wexler

Natalie Wexler is an associate editor of The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800.

The Case for Love

Did the friendship of an early Supreme Court justice and the wife of a colleague ever cross the line of propriety?

by Natalie Wexler | Thursday, June 01, 2006

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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

The Moviegoers

by Mark Edmundson

Living in New York in the mid-1970s, Mark Edmundson was a cab driver, an occasional writer, and, most important, a moviegoer. It was a good time to be a film buff. Martin Scorsese had released Taxi Driver; Paul Schrader wrote and directed Blue Collar; and Robert Altman made The Long Goodbye and California Split. “I can’t really tell you whether these movies summarized a national mood, but they summarized some moods of mine,” writes Edmundson. “Matinees are therapy for those who can’t afford therapists.” Even when life seemed to be going nowhere, at the movies “there was always a chair, at least unoccupied if not specifically assigned, stained with Coke, crackling with popcorn bits.”