Anecdotal Evidence
'Neither Angels Nor Devils'
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written...
10 months ago
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written on his blog five years ago. In a post titled “Curse Words,” abbreviated
by Simon throughout as “CW,” he reviews profanity as used in various settings
and languages, including Croat,...
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
11 months ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
The Marginalian
From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
3 months ago
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my...
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
9 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have
their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are,
because of Metamorphoses. Venus
and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion. Icarus –...
Wuthering...
What has happened to me may well be a good thing - the death of Socrates
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts,...
a year ago
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts, especially the last three, are a large part of the fame of
Socrates, the reason he is an exemplar of the wise man to this day. He asked annoying questions, he rejected
material...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our...
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
8 months ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine'
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
a month ago
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No
commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I
do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the
show in the garden. Butterflies,...
The Marginalian
The Universe in Verse Book
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and...
7 months ago
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and deepen the terms on which we meet ourselves and each other. At the crossing point of the two we may find a way of clarifying our experience and of sanctifying it."
sbensu
The person behind the idea
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
2 weeks ago
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Ordinary, Helpless, Moody Human Talk'
Long ago I came
to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m...
a year ago
Long ago I came
to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m no
matchmaker and don’t have the soul of a proselytizer. I resent people telling
me what I ought to like. On Wednesday two young missionaries came to the front
door. One launched his...
Wuthering...
it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the...
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without...
a year ago
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without Any Gaps. What can that mean, without any gaps?
We’ve finished Aristotle, and it’s right about here that
there would normally be a gap. In an
undergraduate philosophy course you...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad'
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
6 months ago
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift
was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”
Now there’s a
metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
Robert Caro
Anatomy of a $9 Burglary
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all...
a year ago
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all signs indicated a simple case of burglar
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Take The 2025 ACX Survey
...
2 days ago
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are All Potential Recruits for Anarchy'
It’s an
honor to be published in The New
Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years...
6 months ago
It’s an
honor to be published in The New
Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years after it was
founded by the late Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman. To share pages in the June issue with Gary Saul Morson, Victor Davis Hanson and other gifted writers is...
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and...
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
9 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm'
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still...
11 months ago
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still reading, still sending notes of encouragement to those of us who
can use the occasional infusion of sprightliness. In the last month he has
published reviews and essays devoted to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context'
An old
friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects
what he calls...
3 months ago
An old
friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects
what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a
connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in
both of them.
“[I]t's a
similar sense of...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Marginalian
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships
"Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
a year ago
"Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder...
5 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Blue Glass
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
11 months ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Domestic Privacies"
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of...
9 months ago
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of Literature,” when she refers to Dr. Johnson as “grand master of
English prose.” She also practices what Anecdotal Evidence preaches: “the
intersection of books and life.” We might...
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity."
Wuthering...
Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said...
2 months ago
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really
do it.
November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza. I will be joining her by reading at least the
first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
7 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lasting Vivification of a Word'
I’ve read
Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the...
9 months ago
I’ve read
Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the second time in a week,
and have decided one might easily write a book about it. The prose is dense
with interesting and useful ideas:
“The
prevalent weakness, too, of many minds–the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers'
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it...
10 months ago
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should
equal Argus his Eyes . . .”
The first surgery
on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope'
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville...
7 months ago
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted
to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve
mentioned recently at...
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish...
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness."
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed...
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
10 months ago
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art
history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid. The book is of the highest interest, and is a
long way from the catalogue of...
Josh Thompson
Fixing Ford and Washington
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but...
over a year ago
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but it is doable:
Step 1: Install car-friendly roundabouts targeting a ~20 mph throughput speed throughout the city and eliminate all stopsigns and stoplights
Please see about...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
7 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?)
These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
Wuthering...
Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not...
A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an...
6 months ago
A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James
Weldon Johnson
The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read
over the course of months. The quotation
up above is from p. 783. I will write
about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air'
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a...
8 months ago
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The
River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of
me that finds the obscenity...
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.
I
did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative...
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to
But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
But it would feel more like play.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Discussian of General Ideas'
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever...
4 months ago
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal
House and 1984. Neither have I
read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which
are among the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Artist Knows He Is Ready'
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds...
7 months ago
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds as though he seizes up when he sits down at the keyboard. To
call his condition “writer’s block” would be premature. He’s too inexperienced
for that to be happening already. The...
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer.
I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Troublesome Error, a Pernicious Foppery''
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words...
7 months ago
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words as cant and foppery, so as to avoid the more precise
but less polite bullshit. For foppery, the OED offers among its definitions “foolishness, imbecility,
stupidity, folly.” It’s...
This Space
39 Books: 1995
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
7 months ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Related But Detached'
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
10 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies.
Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the
worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are'
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and...
a year ago
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of
V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle
reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Things That Pass'
Among the
books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of...
8 months ago
Among the
books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of The American Scholar, which
I bought for a quarter. Joseph Epstein was still the editor. On Page 97 is a
poem, “Old
Man Sitting in a Shopping Mall,” by a writer whose name was...
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming
The post Bathing Badasses...
5 months ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming
The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
7 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste
...
2 weeks ago
sbensu
The Market for Takes
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but...
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but with a big grain of salt.
Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.”
This seems to be an aspirational...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Semantic gaps
Swedish has a specific word for each of the four grandparents: mormor, morfar, farmor, farfar....
11 months ago
Swedish has a specific word for each of the four grandparents: mormor, morfar, farmor, farfar. English doesn’t. So when you mention your 'grandma' to a Swede, they are left wondering 'which grandma?' even if it is not relevant to the story. That is a semantic gap.
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
6 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Close to the Caliber of Mark Twain'
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three...
3 months ago
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) was asked by Bill
Kauffman about the scarcity of politicians who are today capable of formulating their
own coherent let alone eloquent...
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return'
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically
implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:
“Greasy,
grimy gopher guts!
Little dirty
birdie feet!”
As in any
folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Designing Posters for Humans
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is:
Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper)
Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World'
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a
certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him
wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about...
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
3 weeks ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style'
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews...
8 months ago
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation
in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
3 days ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
Josh Thompson
Playing Pranks
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial...
over a year ago
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial list:
Convincing me that I was about to eat a slice of carrot cake; it was a sponge covered with toothpaste. I bit into it.
Convincing me that she had, in anger and frustration, cut off almost...
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe …
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It...
6 months ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buy Something Before You Get Socked in the Eye'
The indispensable
Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had
never...
a year ago
The indispensable
Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had
never known before, Margaret Fishback (1900-85). Like L.E. Sissman she worked
in advertising and published in The New
Yorker. Unlike Sissman, she wrote light verse almost exclusively and...
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies'
As a boy I
was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close
friends...
5 months ago
As a boy I
was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close
friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have
nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s,
a month after my eleventh...
Josh Thompson
Dizzying but Invisible Depth
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is...
over a year ago
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is shutdown, so it’s not easily sharable. I’m reposting here because this is such a useful post.
Dizzying but invisible depth
You just went to the Google home page.
Simple, isn’t...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable'
This I found
in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to
mirrors....
a year ago
This I found
in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to
mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new
vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”
Stern (1928-2013)
was seventy-one at the time and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration'
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to
tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September
1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist...
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
7 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
The Elysian
No one buys books
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
This Space
The end of something
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nor, Quitted Once, Can It Be Quite Recalled'
I think we have
fetishized age thirteen. It’s linguistic: the first -teen, as though that were some...
3 weeks ago
I think we have
fetishized age thirteen. It’s linguistic: the first -teen, as though that were some rite of passage. I remember awaiting
that age with trepidation, uncertain what was expected of me. I knew
contemporaries who were already shaving and one who was pregnant. (Where...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
a month ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous...
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
11 months ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Is My Ambition Here'
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965,...
a year ago
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965, when Miss Wagy had
us memorize it in eighth-grade English. The poem is irresistible for recitation,
whether privately in times of self-doubt or at the Kiwanis luncheon: “I am...
Anecdotal Evidence
Arthur Krystal
My review of
two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or
Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some...
5 months ago
My review of
two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or
Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some Unfinished Chaos: The Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald – is
published in Ron Slate’s On the Seawall.
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk
The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass'
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write...
6 months ago
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a
master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his
contemporaries George...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 360.5
...
3 days ago
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
6 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey
The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
2 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Now We Shall Never, Never See Her Again'
Ian Donaldson
begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his
death...
a year ago
Ian Donaldson
begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his
death but with his interment in Westminster Abbey. Though a popular playwright
during his lifetime, Jonson died in poverty and was buried vertically in order to
consume less valuable real...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Its Masters’ Love Is'
The late
D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according
to some...
6 months ago
The late
D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according
to some aspect of their subject matter. Melville is your
go-to cetology guy and Edith Wharton took care of sleds. Or, as Nabokov said of
Hemingway’s books: “something about bells, balls and...
The Marginalian
How to Befriend Time: The Gospel of Pete Seeger and Nina Simone
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
a year ago
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Feel With Melancholy Wonder'
I was
introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies
by...
5 months ago
I was
introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies
by Edward Dahlberg, a difficult man who furthered my education. Collected in Epitaphs for Our Time: The Letters of Edward
Dahlberg (George Braziller, 1967) are five letters to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Companionable Room'
I had a
minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books
stored...
11 months ago
I had a
minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books
stored off-site in the Library Service Center I got this message: “No items can
fulfill the submitted request.” That made no sense and I couldn’t figure out a
way around the roadblock, so I...
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
2 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
The Marginalian
Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what...
a year ago
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself'
The saddest
man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a
jokester, the...
4 days ago
The saddest
man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a
jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his
inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at
something he says out of pity and an...
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy'
When I’m
told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me
dies. Just...
3 months ago
When I’m
told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me
dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations,
strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise
us. An
Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
This Space
39 Books: 1990
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two...
7 months ago
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two more since. The second one came along this year. In 1989, I got a temporary job in the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum where I met Carl Erlewyn-Lajeunesse, an...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
The context is smarter than you.
4 months ago
The context is smarter than you.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Interior Decoration Doesn't Count"
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland,...
8 months ago
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland, where I visited often as a kid and worked in 1975. I was in the
basement in the general hardback fiction section where I saw the copy of Under the Volcano I bought there
forty-nine...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism
By September 30th.
3 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1994
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
7 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
a month ago
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my
head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go
and an hour later it bubbled...
Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
7 months ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
Josh Thompson
Back in the Saddle
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your...
over a year ago
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your ability to switch tasks to another project diminishes.
There’s plenty of evidence that humans can’t multi-task, and those who try just end up doing a lot of things poorly.
On the...
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all...
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof).
I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep'
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else.
Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say
Hey, there’s...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
Josh Thompson
Metaprogramming in Ruby: method_missing
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby
It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but...
over a year ago
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby
It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but I wanted to take them out and apply them to some easy Exercisms.
I feel some disclosure may be useful. In no way, at all, should you ever implement any of the “solutions” I’m...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less'
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working...
a year ago
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday
for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is the Past That Cast the Stars'
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted...
a year ago
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted reader. That same month, Poetry, a journal I would start reading
a few years after Mad, published its fortieth anniversary issue. Included is the work of more than fifty poets,...
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
7 months ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early, Part 3
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep...
over a year ago
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t.
Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks:
Benadryl messes with your ability to...
Josh Thompson
Quotes from 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', by Pete Walker
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful.
Some of you,...
over a year ago
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful.
Some of you, many of you, have blessed me and cared for me in kind ways, sometimes with very little knowledge of what was going on, or why I was the way that I was. Thank you. I’ve been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe'
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit...
5 months ago
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take
him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored.
Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
This Space
A loss of problems
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being...
a year ago
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being talked about on television and in newspapers. Money was the first quickly followed by each and every one that preceded it, including the journalism in The Moronic Inferno, which I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Last of All Last Words Spoken Is, Good-bye'
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course,...
a year ago
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course, especially with age, and it pays to double-check the important things
if you intend to share the memories with others. I’ve just learned that a guy I
haven’t seen in half a...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Your Feelings Are Not Unique
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Writer on Board
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a...
8 months ago
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a video on good endings by Michael Arndt, screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, that basically answers the question I explored in Just Add Dinosaurs, where I argued that Matthew Dicks’...
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
RailsConf CFP Outline
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...
over a year ago
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed:
Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems
Abstract:
Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.”
Jr. Devs, or as...
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dictionary of Dead Words'
How to
account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language?...
a year ago
How to
account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language? I’ve
always supposed it was laziness or the absence of imagination. Why work hard at
writing or speaking when a ready-made word, phrase or thought shows up automatically
like pain with a...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original...
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most
Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I
have seen outside of Latin American literature.
Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
Ben Borgers
You Might Be Right, But Shut Up
over a year ago
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland
That's the joy of being a writer.
a month ago
That's the joy of being a writer.
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the...
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes'
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past...
a month ago
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past ages of the world
When, as I
thought, the energy in things
Shone
through their shapes, when sun and moon no less
Than tree or
stone or star or human face
Were seen
but as fantastic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Will Be No One Left Who Knew Their Cost'
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups...
8 months ago
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups were leaving us alone was “playing Army.” All of us had toy guns or at
least sticks. Given our ages, when dividing into good guys and bad guys, the
latter were always Germans and...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
5 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.'
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the...
4 days ago
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the January 2025 issue of The
New Criterion.:
“Rickard
often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to
speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well Educated and Glad of the Fact'
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this...
a month ago
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this immersion into literature part of his or her own life, so that the experience of books has been integral with the experience of life and therefore strongly influences his or her general...
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely...
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API.
We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON.
Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books'
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne...
3 months ago
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of
school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald
Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel"
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
This Space
"When now?"
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Sky Seems to Turn Into Rain'
The storm
was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne
river. The tops...
7 months ago
The storm
was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne
river. The tops of newly planted trees touched the ground. Yard and street filled
with branches, leaves and pine cones. A block away, an oak cracked and fell,
blocking the street. We lost power at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sodding Good and Touching Was the Poem'
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his...
11 months ago
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his first and finest novel, Lucky
Jim. Three days later, Philip Larkin completed “Born Yesterday” (The Less Deceived, 1955) and dedicated it
to the little girl:
“Tightly-folded
bud,
I...
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors
I’m learning Spanish right now,
as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,
as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of
learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
Josh Thompson
Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and...
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...
over a year ago
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse.
Hey there,
I’m...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates
I’m still catching up with myself.
I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.
I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher,
independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible. The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds
is not much help. But luckily we have
Xenophon, a close...
Josh Thompson
Why I use a Kindle
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to
not use one focus either on practical...
over a year ago
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to
not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons
to use a...
This Space
39 Books: 2016
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then.
Cut forward to...
The Marginalian
Yellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that...
a year ago
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that every great moral and spiritual leader in the history of our civilization has shared “the great goal of the internal and external liberation of man* from the evils of war” as Freud...
The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and...
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light'
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as...
2 months ago
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as Martial:
“In private
she mourns not the late-lamented;
If someone’s
by, her tears leap forth on call.
Sorrow, my
dear, is not so easily rented.
They are
true tears that without witness...
This Space
The end of literature, part four
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."
Wuthering...
Books I Read in August 2023
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted
to more important things. Plenty of...
a year ago
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted
to more important things. Plenty of energy
to read, though.
With a respite in September, I should soon be able to write
a bit on the Greek philosophers I have been reading. The Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics work...
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals.
I’ll record some...
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals.
I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go.
Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator
I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation.
So, in the book,...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November'
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
a month ago
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the Ruins (1950):
“We enter
again November; cold late light
Glazes the field, a little fever of love,
Held in numbed hands, admires the false gods;
While lonely on this coast the...
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own.
Previous reviews: 2018, 2017,
2016, 2015
My review breaks down into a few broad categories:
Travel
Relationships & Community
Leadville Trail...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World'
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility....
4 months ago
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the
end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined
to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
Steven Scrawls
Doomr
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
10 months ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up.
(If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,...
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries. I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Bystander Angel, He Records the Dying'
My late-life
swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission
but I’m...
a year ago
My late-life
swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission
but I’m unlikely to read Proust for a third time. The shorter form is ideally
adapted to my circadian rhythms. I can read two or three before going to bed.
Of late, the masters: Chekhov,...
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the...
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
5 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of...
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
6 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
Josh Thompson
How to Move
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen:
We both are in process with new jobs
I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,...
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read,...
a week ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by
Charlotte Lennox. I had not read it, so
I trailed along.
An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her
brain addled by novels:
From...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War Had Won'
“The war had
taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the
destined...
a year ago
“The war had
taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the
destined anguish’ - revealed itself gradually and became a presence in his
poetry for the rest of his life.”
Margi
Blunden, speaking in 2014, is remembering her father, the poet and Great...
The American Scholar
“A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
9 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find It Hard to Read Great Books at All'
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s....
8 months ago
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s. I like Vonnegut. A lot of the stuff before that is like a foreign language
to me.” I’m reminded of an English professor who told me more than half a century ago that
most of her...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Someone Who Could Never Be a Peasant'
I first
encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov,...
3 months ago
I first
encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, already one of my
favorite writers. Alter’s contribution was “Invitation
to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics,” which Nabokov later described
as “practically flawless.” A...
Josh Thompson
Success is not support
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...
over a year ago
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success.
Support vs. Success
First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”?
Lincoln Murphey says:
Customer Success is proactively working...
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
5 months ago
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
The American Scholar
Chris Combs
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
4 days ago
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts:
So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”.
I...
sbensu
Pricing APIs
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
10 months ago
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
This Space
39 Books: 2015
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken,
spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City
shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend
Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
The Elysian
What futuristic projects should I visit around the world?
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your...
6 months ago
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your city or project? I’d love your help plannin…
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
The...
2 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d...
a month ago
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time
living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children,
unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
The Marginalian
Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of...
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from...
a year ago
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — a deeply damaging story about human nature, damning us and our relationship to nature. Unthinkingly, we have perpetuated this story in our present narrative...
This Space
39 Books: 2011
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is...
7 months ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Depression
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you.
That’s...
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of...
3 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Colder Here Than Organized Charity'
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once...
9 months ago
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once business-like and chatty: “I hope subsequent activities haven’t yet
sufficed to obliterate our Boston dinner last fall from your memory.” The men had
first met in 1953 when each...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Thinking This May Be My Last Summer'
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first...
6 months ago
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first war – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon – but the
second seemed a blank. On my own, I learned of the Americans – Karl Shapiro,
Anthony Hecht, Howard Nemerov. Only...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
This Space
39 Books: 1999
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
7 months ago
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others published around the same time, such as from Quartet Encounters and Carcanet, the latter with a fussy variant on the title: The Book of Disquietude. But this one is the most pleasurable...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object'
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses...
4 months ago
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses me and all make life less annoying. I’ve never been seriously
ill. I take my handful of vitamins and meds in the morning. I no longer drink
and never smoked. Among the last things I...
Josh Thompson
Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation)
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...
7 months ago
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey; everything and nothing changed.
Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience'
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had...
a year ago
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested
in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of
mass atrocities?”
That...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
The American Scholar
The Support Ship
The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Take Measure of the Loss'
The youngest
poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of...
10 months ago
The youngest
poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English (1969)
was M. Scott Momaday, a former Winters graduate student at Stanford who was
then thirty-five years old. Winters, who died in 1968, also considered...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
This Space
39 Books: 2005
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to...
7 months ago
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to disappear?" – the epigram to Enrique Vila-Matas's novel Montano's Malady. It's a line taken from Maurice Blanchot's Infinite Conversation, so I had to buy it. Later that year,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds'
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on...
7 months ago
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political
or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker
moments I wish I could.” Never a...
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others.
A question came up recently:
My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
This Space
The withdrawal of the novel
We are subjected to that which does not exist
Simone Weil
When an old friend who...
over a year ago
We are subjected to that which does not exist
Simone Weil
When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “inventions, fairy stories, not real, made up", I was...
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.)
Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.)
Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked'
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists....
2 weeks ago
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin
classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an
omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.)
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article.
The internet is littered with tons of
fluff pieces talking about sex...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously'
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
2 months ago
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his
journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at
least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
The American Scholar
Guillermo
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing
else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing
else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.
He took the example of Socrates to its limit. Plato is the one who called him “Socrates
gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how
Socrates...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor'
“For nearly
twenty years after the publication of The
Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
“For nearly
twenty years after the publication of The
Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”
A
provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which
aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year ago
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
The third chair
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
Josh Thompson
Learn to Type - Again
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve...
over a year ago
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve learned from learning Colemak
Short, focused practice yields great results.
When I start a timer for twenty minutes, I feel a sense of urgency, rather than defeat. Time boxing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Empty Heart is Full at Length'
Two-hundred-fifty
years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made
their...
a year ago
Two-hundred-fifty
years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made
their grand tour of Scotland, including the Hebrides, and both would
publish accounts of their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland appeared in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin'
In 2011, in
an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of...
a year ago
In 2011, in
an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a
wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert
Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the
contribution...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity'
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty...
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them
were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on
the cheap. One of them, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All'
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no...
3 months ago
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely
like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later.
For some baked goods, breakfast...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic'
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the
profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters
(1969; rev. ed....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying'
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy,...
a year ago
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its
earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The
Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
Steven Scrawls
Stone Hands Reaching
Stone Hands Reaching
I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find
myself...
6 months ago
Stone Hands Reaching
I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find
myself touching a stone forearm. It’s cold, of course, and it’s coarser
than skin, but tracing along the arms is enough to bring back memories
of being comforted, of being held, when I was a...
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
12 months ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
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