Anecdotal Evidence
'A Jewish Kind of Feeling of the World'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer...
3 hours ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer can have a programme. Many have; they say, ‘I’m writing
about alienation’, or whatever they call it. I don’t have this programme. I
have a story to tell and I sit down to tell the...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as...
4 hours ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
18 hours ago
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
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...
yesterday
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...
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
yesterday
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
2 days ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Anecdotal Evidence
'How It Sounds When Read Out Loud'
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written...
2 days ago
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written seventy-five years earlier and picked students to read aloud each of
its four, eight-line stanzas. She suggested we pay attention to who is
speaking, as the poem is written as a dialogue...
The American Scholar
“Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American...
2 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Landscape in One Word!'
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone,...
3 days ago
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone, that is more than enough.”
Enough for what? Probably to have established a minimum standard of decency and contentment. Jules Renard (1864-1910) is no stuffy moralist. There’s...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 days ago
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
3 days ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
The Marginalian
Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a...
4 days ago
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a profound knowledge of each other, of the soul beneath the costume of personality — that lovely Celtic notion of anam cara. We bring this knowledge, this mutual understanding, to...
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...
4 days 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Unless It From Enjoyment Spring!'
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context,...
5 days ago
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context, I might have assumed the writer described was Walter de la
Mare, whose poetry I ignored for too long because teachers and critics told me
he wrote solely for children. (Something...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult...
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
6 days ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely Cultivated and Painstakingly Honest'
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as...
6 days ago
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as good an apologia for her manner of writing, among others, as I’ve ever encountered:
“Silence is
more eloquent than speech – a truism; but sometimes something that someone...
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
6 days ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
a week ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck'
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short...
a week ago
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short stories and of one novel, Camp
Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only
recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
The American Scholar
The Patron Subjects
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The...
a week ago
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The post The Patron Subjects appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also...
a week ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also mention my health. A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius
removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with
it. My recovery went well, and my liver
grew...
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 week ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
Escaping Flatland
6 lessons I learned working at an art gallery
On agency, doing value-aligned work, and making your job fun
a week ago
On agency, doing value-aligned work, and making your job fun
Anecdotal Evidence
'No Secret Element of Gusto Warms Up the Sermon'
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck...
a week ago
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck does not. A.J. Liebling has it. Woodward and Bernstein have never
heard of it. Gusto is taking pleasure in the job at hand. About writers it
suggests energy and enjoyment in playing...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves?
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a week ago
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of...
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a week ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin. Here I will write about the second volume of
the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club. Last time, after reading the first fifth of
the novel, I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death'
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a week ago
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished,
no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning
reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without
once using any of...
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 week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!...
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
a week ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal
shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and
sometimes about the past.
These are all old moves, old techniques. I was a...
The Marginalian
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best...
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand...
a week ago
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then Became a Name Like Others Slain'
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund...
a week ago
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund Blunden articulates the impulse that
would drive his poetry for the next half-century: “I must go over it again.” Psychically,
there was no Armistice. Whether to purge its memory or...
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually...
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long
stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
a week ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long
stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand
one of his paintings. Each of the novel’s
seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting:
AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things'
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a week ago
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every
possible situation. Montaigne.”
I could have
signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in
the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chronic Independence of Mind'
“A chronic
independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly
been safer...
a week ago
“A chronic
independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly
been safer to praise independence than to exemplify it.”
Bracing
words from one of literature’s inveterate outsiders, English poet and critic C.H.
Sisson (1914-2003). He’s writing about...
The American Scholar
My Cousin Manya
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a week ago
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty'
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree...
a week ago
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it
while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before
revealing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
2 weeks 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...
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me?
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
2 weeks ago
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
2 weeks ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Forlorn Hope'
Published in
the February 1950 issue of Partisan
Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature...
2 weeks ago
Published in
the February 1950 issue of Partisan
Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature beloved by editors and loquacious
respondents – this one titled “Religion and the Intellectuals.” Such things
tend to be heavy on posturing and vast generalizations. I might have been...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Sum of All the Losses'
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was...
2 weeks ago
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was half an inch shorter). The crown of his trademark top hat – a stovepipe, it
was called -- measured twelve inches in height. Allowing for the silk hat settling on his head, the...
The American Scholar
“To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared...
2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Ethos and imagination
Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton,...
2 weeks ago
Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton, 1957
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which...
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
2 weeks ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November'
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
2 weeks 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...
The American Scholar
Dottie Lo Bue
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish?
That depends on us.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Point of Literature'
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible...
2 weeks ago
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible human
being, as though this constituted recently declassified information. Such an understanding
of literature and literary history, if followed to its logical conclusion, will
result in a...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest...
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
2 weeks ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest...
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
2 weeks ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine'
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
2 weeks 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
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season...
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
2 weeks ago
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Winter Came in August Killing Fruit and Seed'
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The...
2 weeks ago
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The American Scholar:
“Edward Case’s
work has appeared in various journals, including the New Criterion, the Wall
Street Journal, and Modern Age.
This poem was taken from a collection of...
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the...
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
2 weeks ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink'
Dr. Johnson
thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as
giving us...
3 weeks ago
Dr. Johnson
thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as
giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads
the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to
himself. In the early pages of his...
The American Scholar
American Horror Story
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Masters of Horror and Magic
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first...
3 weeks ago
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
3 weeks ago
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
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...
3 weeks 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 American Scholar
Part of the Parade
The post Part of the Parade appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The post Part of the Parade appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
3 weeks ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches'
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune...
3 weeks ago
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”
Today is the
centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The
Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
"A Fury of Self-Deception, Malice, and Conceit'
There’s no
getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the
collective,...
3 weeks ago
There’s no
getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the
collective, could carry on this way? An innocent question or observation prompts
a sonic explosion. I’m unable to get that angry and loud so quickly. Perhaps
if my family were threatened....
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland
That's the joy of being a writer.
3 weeks ago
That's the joy of being a writer.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Mandelstam Dances Barefoot in the Snow Alone'
“In the end
like all great poets he became a jester”
Not the usual
encomium one expects for Osip...
3 weeks ago
“In the end
like all great poets he became a jester”
Not the usual
encomium one expects for Osip Mandelstam, dead at age forty-seven in a Soviet camp,
but the eulogist is Zbigniew Herbert, a congenitally ironic poet, ever aware of
the comic in the appalling. For my birthday I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Example of Abundant Good Nature'
The Rev.
Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:
“I...
3 weeks ago
The Rev.
Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:
“I am
seventy-two years of age, at which period there comes over one a shameful love
of ease and repose, common to dogs, horses, clergymen and even to Edinburgh Reviewers. Then an idea...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Hundred Words for the Word Brother'
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother...
3 weeks ago
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother of mine, [Arnaud, Lord of] Saint-Martin,
twenty-three years old, who had already given pretty good proof of his valor, while
playing tennis was struck by a ball a little above the...
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
3 weeks ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s...
4 weeks ago
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s notebooks, collected in Notes
from Hampstead (trans. John Hargraves, 1998). While I admire the work of a
handful of critics – Dryden, Johnson, Winters, Cunningham, a few others –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
4 weeks ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
The American Scholar
The March Down Main
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 weeks ago
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
4 weeks ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
4 weeks ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
4 weeks ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Least Appealing Aspects of Our Species'
The twentieth
century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances...
a month ago
The twentieth
century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances were
extraordinary – antibiotics, insulin, the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Airplanes, television,
computers, space exploration. And yet Guy Davenport was not being needlessly morbid
when he...
The American Scholar
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
One essay could change the future
Please support a better media ecosystem.
a month ago
Please support a better media ecosystem.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL'
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of...
a month ago
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page
pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard
reviews various twentieth-century...
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
a month ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
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...
a month 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...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think?
+ links
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature'
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives /...
a month ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.”
Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what
used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Weightier Than All the Gear I’ll Carry'
I was a lazy
student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I...
a month ago
I was a lazy
student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I retained
was a lasting interest in mythology, Roman history and etymology. I probably
learned more English words than Latin – celerity,
pulchritude, jocular, spelunker, procrastination,...
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...
a month 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 American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery
The post The...
a month ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery
The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
a month ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One I Loved Taught Here, Provoking Strife'
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the...
a month ago
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the university published a commemorative volume, Laurel, Archaic, Rude: A Collection of Poems. It gathers twenty-six
poems written by former students, including Edgar Bowers,...
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
a month ago
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Who Needs Your Stories?'
Have you
ever read something – it might be a poem or a history
book, almost anything – and...
a month ago
Have you
ever read something – it might be a poem or a history
book, almost anything – and encountered a phrase or sentence so self-contained
and dense with meaning, in words so perfectly arranged, that you stop reading,
ponder and write it down? You may not even continue with...
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Personal Affections'
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It...
a month ago
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It seems to be rooted in the conviction that readers ought to read writers in
their original volumes, not someone’s curated selection, or something like
that. In common with most...
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
a month 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...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
a month ago
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Wildness
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable,...
a month ago
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In...
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)...
a month 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
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
a month ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ill-Assorted Collection'
A friend has
broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty
emails in...
a month ago
A friend has
broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty
emails in her direction. As prose they are better than average. There have been
no threats of violence and little profanity. The ex’s weapon of choice is a
detailed critique of every aspect...
Wuthering...
Naming the garden in The Story of the Stone - the pleasures of incomprehension
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was
born with the jade stone in his...
a month ago
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was
born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high
prestige slave of the Emperor. She is
likely herself still a teen when we learn, in Chapter 16 of The Story of the
Stone, that she has been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along'
“Persistently
obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”
A truth I
had...
a month ago
“Persistently
obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”
A truth I
had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not
the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!'
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
a month ago
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress
out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was
like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the
details of the...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it?
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
a month ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party. I will rejoin the party planning momentarily.
The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel
about an extended family. The main plot
is the teenage love triangle, but...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Love of Reading Is Caught, Not Taught'
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to...
a month ago
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to sound a little pretentious. For now I’ll keep it at “books.” Nadya Williams
titles her essay “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization,” which, I understand, is
more reader-enticing than...
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant...
a month ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
a month ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five
volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel.
I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it,
but in a sense I did finish a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement'
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
a month ago
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of
intoxications.”
Driving while
reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light,
I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
The American Scholar
Rap Rap Rap
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
a month ago
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older
contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and
the 117-line title poem appeared in The
Massachusetts Review in 1970....
The American Scholar
From All Souls by Saskia Hamilton
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton 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...
a month 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
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang'
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
a month ago
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to
my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a
young man asked if he...
This Space
No safe landing
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici
Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
a month ago
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici
Gabriel Josipovici has said that as a critic he is conservative but as a novelist he is radical. The second claim may not be controversial but the first will come as a surprise to those who remember what he said...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken'
“This is
beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”
As the
horrors...
a month ago
“This is
beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”
As the
horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as
useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and
understanding, and often still do. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Constant Repair'
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it
was plain. They came forward with a...
a month ago
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it
was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at each other’s
hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both had. It put one in a good
humour to see it.”
Yet again I’ve heard the small-minded slur that...
The American Scholar
This Woman’s Work
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism
The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
a month ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism
The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley
The video from our live event.
a month ago
The video from our live event.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are Many Real Things of Beauty Here'
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating...
a month ago
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating its
opposite, ugliness, exactly, though his prose definitely leans in that
direction. Only a graduate-school alumnus could come up with such silly ideas.
Rather, he seemed to be saying that...
Wuthering...
How Ivan Bunin and Vasily Grossman spent the war - He was in the countryside then for the last time...
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of...
a month ago
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of Russian literature: Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur
(1929 /1972, tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) in the Gogolian and
Dostoyevskian strand, Ivan Bunin’s Dark Avenues (1943/1946)...
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting
+ links
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Have to Read the Words'
“Tolstoy was
so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even
remotely...
a month ago
“Tolstoy was
so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even
remotely compare anyone to him.”
I first read
War and Peace in the eighth grade in
a paperback abridgement. I remember reading it in science class, half-heartedly
hiding the book behind the...
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally
The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
a month 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously'
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
a month 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
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'In a More Just World'
Our youngest
son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a
junior...
a month ago
Our youngest
son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a
junior at Rice, he lived off-campus in an apartment. This year he’s back in a
dormitory so most of his “housewares” – clothing, dishes and utensils, tchotchkes
– have been heaped in his...
The American Scholar
Bony Ramirez
Beautiful parasites
The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Beautiful parasites
The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Shadow Cabinet of Writers'
“All of us,
probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority
taste can be...
a month ago
“All of us,
probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority
taste can be powerful enough to make for some isolated masterpiece a small niche
in literary history -- Henry Green’s Loving
and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune's Maggot have both...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools'
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in...
a month ago
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Important Medium''
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should
embarrass me. When I went to college...
a month ago
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should
embarrass me. When I went to college and someone asked where I came from, invariably
I said “Cleveland” not “Parma Heights,” a suburb on the West Side of that city.
By age seventeen I was already sensitive to the...
The American Scholar
A Poet of the Soil
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity
The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first...
a month ago
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity
The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Immense Special Talent'
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his...
a month ago
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then
I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of
Henry James’ writings on...
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
a month ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
This Space
Twentieth anniversary post
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.
In recent years many posts have...
a month ago
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.
In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (there is no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of...
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
a month ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death"
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an...
a month ago
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent
use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane,
metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
The American Scholar
Good Intentions
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
a month ago
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past?
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
a month ago
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
a month ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
a month 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...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
a month ago
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious...
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
a month ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World Has Always Seemed to Me So Various'
I dropped
out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to
complete my...
2 months ago
I dropped
out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to
complete my B.A. in English until 2003. The lack of a degree never got in the
way of working for almost a quarter-century as a newspaper reporter. I suspect
a degree in most non-STEM...
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...
2 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
2 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
The American Scholar
Queen of the Night
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark
The post Queen of the Night appeared...
2 months ago
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark
The post Queen of the Night appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
2 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
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...
2 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...
The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts
It’s natural—and right—to foster
The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster
The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of...
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
2 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back'
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
2 months ago
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little
or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our
author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned
endorsement. The most...
The American Scholar
The Source
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant
From Giacometti’s sketch book
2 months ago
From Giacometti’s sketch book
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature'
“We should hesitate
to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
2 months ago
“We should hesitate
to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached
passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the
writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the
writer of English...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea...
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
2 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions
Our calendar of upcoming events.
2 months ago
Our calendar of upcoming events.
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine'
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking...
2 months ago
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he
acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly
believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
The American Scholar
Jason Middlebrook
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
2 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fruit of My Studies'
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and
have politely declined. I even like some of the...
2 months ago
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and
have politely declined. I even like some of the readers who already belong, but
by nature I’m not a joiner of anything. As soon as an arrangement among friendly
individuals becomes formalized – by that I mean, organized, with...
The American Scholar
Others
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first...
2 months ago
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Understand Our Fellow Creatures a Little Better'
Edwin
Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de
Forest Smith on...
2 months ago
Edwin
Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de
Forest Smith on May 13, 1896:
“If printed
lines are good for anything, they are bound to be picked up some time; and
then, if some poor devil of a man or woman feels any better or any stronger...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are'
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his...
2 months ago
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’
but his honesty, his complete
leveling with the reader.”
I tried a
little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word'
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The...
2 months ago
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The Latin
tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!”
It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the
opening lines of...
The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
2 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
The American Scholar
Cancer
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,...
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
2 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Then Came the Barbarians'
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at...
2 months ago
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at least make him sick. When I confront a prose poem I run, though
sometimes I pause to laugh and then run. The question becomes, which is worse:
the poet’s ineptness or his...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
2 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
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...
2 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...
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...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest...
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
2 months ago
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or Jupiter."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Learning Is Not Defunct in the Republic'
“As you
probably don’t read National Review,
I enclose proof that learning is not defunct in the...
2 months ago
“As you
probably don’t read National Review,
I enclose proof that learning is not defunct in the Republic. Buckley had
printed a note . . . praising Waugh’s delightful whimsy in coining a nonsense
phrase like tohu bohu. Catholics tend
not to have read a word of Holy Writ.”
I...
The American Scholar
Celebrating an American Icon
The post Celebrating an American Icon appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Celebrating an American Icon appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Power of the Common Soul
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Sound of the Picturesque
Charles Ives and the Visual
The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Charles Ives and the Visual
The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be'
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along...
2 months ago
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite
boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonplace Insights'
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in...
2 months ago
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in 1970, the year I entered BG as a
freshman. Today it’s the only institution in the country to have a Department
of Popular Culture. As an English major I hung around with professors who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
2 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome...
2 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
2 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
2 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
2 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
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,...
2 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...
The American Scholar
Writer on Board
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books'
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne...
2 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...
The American Scholar
Guillermo
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with...
2 months ago
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” Henry Beston observed of other animals two generations before naturalist Sy Montgomery...
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State
This cooperative could be its own country.
2 months ago
This cooperative could be its own country.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Than Documentary'
“Literariness,
as I understand it, does not necessarily entail any particular set of...
2 months ago
“Literariness,
as I understand it, does not necessarily entail any particular set of formal
qualities. What makes a work literary is the ability to be understood and
appreciated outside the context of its origin. That is why a literary work, however
valuable as a document of its...
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Moondance
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of...
2 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
Insisting on the Positive
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The...
2 months ago
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Thoreau’s Pencils
How might a newly discovered
The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
How might a newly discovered
The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post...
2 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Stranger in the Seven Hills
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City
The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on...
2 months ago
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City
The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
2 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Look Out!
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors
The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
2 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors
The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home
The wonders of the coastal redwood
The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood
The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
2 months ago
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Until He Un-Alived'
“But at
bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and
if a poet...
2 months ago
“But at
bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and
if a poet loses his pleasure-seeking audience he has lost the only audience
worth having, for which the dutiful mob that signs on every September is no
substitute.”
Philip
Larkin’s...
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."
2 months ago
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?'
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland...
2 months ago
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France.
This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits
annihilation and destruction....
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I...
2 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save
Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for
some other time.
FICTION
The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the
great Hassan Haddawy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Certificate of Naturalization'
In our
basement was a gray file cabinet we were forbidden to touch. Naturally I opened
it and in one...
2 months ago
In our
basement was a gray file cabinet we were forbidden to touch. Naturally I opened
it and in one of the drawers I found an old leather wallet containing the ID
cards of a stranger with the surname Kurpiewski. Who is this? Why is the name
so similar to ours? I couldn’t ask...
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds...
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
2 months ago
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Quickly It Would Slip By'
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events...
2 months ago
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves
seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its
own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant
– some of them stand out...
The American Scholar
Up Close
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Up Close
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism
By September 30th.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Culmination of Contemporary Economism'
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves...
2 months ago
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves works of art. In later years he relied more on accounts with hotel
chains and the glass office buildings in downtown Cleveland. Frames for these corporate
accounts he called...
The American Scholar
Three Poems
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Three Poems
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living'
“After
someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels
cruel somehow, as...
2 months ago
“After
someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels
cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”
I didn’t
know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
2 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
2 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Memories Packed in the Rapid-Access File'
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to...
2 months ago
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to hospice in the morning went by the professional name “Lazarus” –
an omen I choose to leave unexamined and merely enjoy. Ken would have enjoyed
it.
Shortly after his death one of the...
The American Scholar
“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English...
2 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night. That “end of night” is death. The existence of death makes everything
hateful and nullifies the value of anything else. I gotta say that the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell'
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But...
2 months ago
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”
John Byron
Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart
of what remains of our civilization. In...
The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
2 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
Anecdotal Evidence
Kenneth C. Kurp 1955-2024
My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two...
2 months ago
My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two weeks of his life. He was age sixty-nine. I was with him as was his son, Abraham Kurp. I watched as his eyes closed and he stopped breathing. There was another sense, too, of a sudden...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight'
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
2 months ago
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing
incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on
Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice
bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Could, Some Could Not, Shake Off Misery'
Last week I
wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old...
3 months ago
Last week I
wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old Marine
Corporal in Vietnam, and the war correspondent who wrote a dispatch about him
for a newspaper. Two days later, after learning that the stringer, Albert W.
Vinson, soon took his own life,...
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel...
3 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries...
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
3 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr....
3 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Pseudonyms lets you practice agency
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
3 months ago
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
The Elysian
Further reading on employee ownership
My notes from the margins of my research.
3 months ago
My notes from the margins of my research.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness'
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
3 months ago
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,” J.V.
Cunningham replied:
“You can
write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it,
rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object'
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses...
3 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...
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Hint #2
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
3 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chap Who Doesn't Care Much About Anything'
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed...
3 months ago
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed announcement:
“Today is
National Orangutan Day. The apes are the largest tree-dwelling animals on
Earth. They spend 90 percent of their time in trees, even sleeping in leafy
nests. No wonder...
The American Scholar
“I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
3 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End'
In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult,...
3 months ago
In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs
and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m
visiting my brother in hospice. No...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Hope This Explanation Is Wrong'
One of life’s
unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements
of...
3 months ago
One of life’s
unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements
of words encountered in childhood or youth, and revisited regularly for a
lifetime, still inspire delight, while others, in effect, evaporate before we
hear them? In the latter...
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering...
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
3 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts,
enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord
Sonata (c. 1913). It was a pleasing
congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.
I have nothing...
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
3 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
3 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
3 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
3 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Merely Mental Stenography'
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a...
3 months ago
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a literary magazine. There are too many essays, and vanishingly few good
essayists. There seems to be real confusion about whether style can conceal a
fundamental incuriosity, whether...
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
3 months ago
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation'
As boys, in
our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our
fathers...
3 months ago
As boys, in
our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our
fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture?
These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of
maturity. We wanted to be...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post...
3 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Challenge
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Sweaty Midnight I’m a Lifer'
Think of
this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,”
in which I...
3 months ago
Think of
this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,”
in which I asked readers to report anything they knew about the war
correspondent Albert W. Vinson. He was author of a dispatch recounting a 1968 reconnaissance
patrol in Vietnam led by the...
The Marginalian
Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of...
3 months ago
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of the heart graver than making another our higher power. This may seem inevitable — because to love is always to see the divine in each other, because all love is a yearning for the...
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
3 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Pure Absence, No Place, Nowhere, Not'
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of...
3 months ago
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of the book is the account of
Lenin’s autopsy, following his death at age fifty-two from atherosclerosis.
When tapped with tweezers, his cerebral arteries pinged like stone. They...
The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit'
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool...
3 months ago
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool head in a tight situation.”
Long before
he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a
patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
3 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day'
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
3 months ago
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies.
Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of
biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature
mysticism.
We...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment'
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her...
3 months ago
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of
the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation
of Dead Souls, the Signet...
Wuthering...
Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't...
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. ...
3 months ago
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, for example, to Herman Melville’s Arrowhead:
On this spot, not at this exact desk but in front of this
exact window, Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick,...
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness
links
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Jell-O Once a Week'
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It...
3 months ago
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It wasn’t
plagiarism, exactly, and it was paraphrased. It’s a well-known passage from the
essay “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” one that always reminds me of
Spinoza:
“It is
uncertain...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
3 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
3 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle'
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both...
3 months ago
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines,
etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung
unexpectedly from someone’s head like...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
3 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture'
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin...
3 months ago
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three
oncologists after they had yet again examined
my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
The American Scholar
Un Tinto
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Much Can Be Accomplished'
Cleveland is
traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though
I...
3 months ago
Cleveland is
traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though
I haven’t lived in the city since 1977. The designation suggests working-class
neighborhoods, many of them Slavic. Ethnicity was important, and not usually in
the sense of bigotry. I was...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
The context is smarter than you.
3 months ago
The context is smarter than you.
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
3 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Courage to Face Reality Squarely'
I’m flying to
Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has
already...
3 months ago
I’m flying to
Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has
already metastasized and he’s in the Cleveland Clinic, waiting to be admitted to
their hospice program. Ken turned sixty-nine in April and is two and a half
years younger than me. My...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter'
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
3 months ago
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears
at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled
with not stinging like...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read You As I Listen to Rare Music'
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal...
3 months ago
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal canons, and remains rereadable for the rest of our lives. For me that
would include Swift, Defoe and a third English novelist, a rather exotic import
from Poland: Joseph Conrad. I...
The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
3 months ago
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Valuable Work in Literary Criticism'
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much...
3 months ago
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much classical or Christian
erudition one brings to the task) predict confidently how Johnson is going to
respond to this or that specific question; yet of course by the end one...
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
3 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
3 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten
The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance
From our May writing prompt.
3 months ago
From our May writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Collection of Scraps and Shards of Knowledge'
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of...
3 months ago
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of scraps and shards of
knowledge known as a commonplace book.”
Like Donne (1572-1621), some of us are
magpie-minded, collecting objects shiny and drab, often without obvious
utility....
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...
3 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...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
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