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This Space
Reading, forgetting In an in-between time in which nothing begins or ends, in which blank patience takes the place of...
9 hours ago
4
9 hours ago
In an in-between time in which nothing begins or ends, in which blank patience takes the place of activity, I picked two books from my shelves stubbornly remote from utility, lacking the intimacy of possession, and a third in which I had never read a key section. The first was...
The Elysian
Office Hours An experimental salon.
10 hours ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Death of Discourse' As a boy I was often told I spoke too loudly. It makes sense, as I came from a family of yellers....
17 hours ago
3
17 hours ago
As a boy I was often told I spoke too loudly. It makes sense, as I came from a family of yellers. It’s an annoying habit, usually inappropriate, one I associate with self-centeredness. I made a conscious effort to lower the volume, a rare instance of successfully stifling an...
The American Scholar
Immaculate Innings At the ballpark on a summer night in Baltimore The post Immaculate Innings appeared first on The...
18 hours ago
2
18 hours ago
At the ballpark on a summer night in Baltimore The post Immaculate Innings appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Great American Travel Book The book that helped revive a genre, leading to an all-too-brief heyday The post The Great American...
18 hours ago
3
18 hours ago
The book that helped revive a genre, leading to an all-too-brief heyday The post The Great American Travel Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
a fantastic universe where the presence of man was not foreseen - Maurice Herzog's Annapurna: First... Books that generate other books, books that are first in the line, interest me.  Despite...
19 hours ago
5
19 hours ago
Books that generate other books, books that are first in the line, interest me.  Despite little interest in mountaineering, I read Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak (1951, tr. Nea Morin and Janet Adam Smith) by Maurice Herzog, the subject of the book well summarized...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seldom Softened By Any Appearance of Gaiety' In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical...
yesterday
4
yesterday
In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical appearance. He could be eloquently brutish and write of Jonathan Swift:  “The person of Swift had not many recommendations. He had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he washed...
The American Scholar
Tiny Acts The post Tiny Acts appeared first on The American Scholar.
yesterday
Escaping Flatland
Collaborative writing A common phenomenon in the history of literature is couples writing together.
2 days ago
The Marginalian
Undersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World “The book of love is full of music,” sings Peter Gabriel. “In fact, that’s where music comes from.”...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
“The book of love is full of music,” sings Peter Gabriel. “In fact, that’s where music comes from.” The book of love is written in the language of wonder — our best means of loving life more deeply. To love anything — a person, a pond, the world — is to see the wonder in it, to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Aesthetics My Primary Value' The Louisiana poet Gail White published three poems in Peacock Journal, all freighted with...
2 days ago
6
2 days ago
The Louisiana poet Gail White published three poems in Peacock Journal, all freighted with serious thought and all skirting the charms of light verse. White avoids the failings of pretentiousness and mere silliness. Consider “Resemblances”:  “Somewhere along the primrose...
The American Scholar
“Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of...
2 days ago
5
2 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Are we living in heaven or hell? It's a showdown between Elysium and Tartarus.
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Would If Possible Imitate a Tree' Yet another hero of autodidacticism is Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the English physicist and...
3 days ago
7
3 days ago
Yet another hero of autodidacticism is Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the English physicist and chemist who discovered electromagnetic induction, which eventually led to development of inductors and transformers, and such devices as electric motors and generators. True to the...
The American Scholar
Cici Osias Sewing cultures together The post Cici Osias appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Talked About Philip Larkin' Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He...
4 days ago
10
4 days ago
Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He loved garage sales and thrift shops and had no shame about looking for second-hand bargains. He liked the English expression “jumble sale.” Ken wasn’t cheap but never seemed to have enough...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Essayists, Like Poets, Are Born and Not Made' “A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being,...
5 days ago
7
5 days ago
“A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being, and without it he does well to hold his tongue. Blessed with these attributes he is an essayist to some purpose. Give him leisure and occasion, and his discourse may well become as...
The Marginalian
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements... “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever...
5 days ago
7
5 days ago
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we know how to order it to perform,” Ada Lovelace inveighed upon composing the world’s first algorithm for the world’s first computer. Meanwhile, she was reckoning with the nature...
The Elysian
Marginalia: How to run the world, the case against elections, unions championing WFH Notes from the margins of my research.
6 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Have the Long List of Autodidacts' Robert Penn Warren in Democracy and Poetry (1975):  “The will to change: this is one of the most...
6 days ago
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6 days ago
Robert Penn Warren in Democracy and Poetry (1975):  “The will to change: this is one of the most precious heritages of American democracy. We have the story of the young Washington, who studied surveying and could, by the exercise of his skill, buy ‘Bullskin plantation,’ his...
The American Scholar
The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in...
6 days ago
10
6 days ago
Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in America The post The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful Predator Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most...
a week ago
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a week ago
Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whales, they are the largest member of the dolphin family. Older than great white sharks, they hunt...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Good Humoured Growl' We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies...
a week ago
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a week ago
We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies and an angry man is never forgiving -- convictions rooted in naïveté about human nature, which is willful and contradictory. Few of us even understand our own motives. Here is...
The American Scholar
The Seeker and the Sought A prominent Buddhist scholar’s quest to unify East and West The post The Seeker and the Sought...
a week ago
10
a week ago
A prominent Buddhist scholar’s quest to unify East and West The post The Seeker and the Sought appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Rewilding the Human Spirit in the Age of Moral Colonialism: Brian Eno on Carnival as a Model for... The prisons we choose to live inside hardly ever look like prisons while we are living in them. If...
a week ago
17
a week ago
The prisons we choose to live inside hardly ever look like prisons while we are living in them. If the twentieth century was the age of dictatorships — I grew up in one — reducing human beings to a herd, the twenty-first century, with its self-appointed moral despots, is the age...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Place Remote and Islanded' “If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my...
a week ago
10
a week ago
“If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my things are going to last.”  This is Edwin Arlington Robinson at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, writing to a friend on August 20, 1926. In effect he is proposing a fanciful...
The American Scholar
Eighty The post Eighty appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Discipline Results in Freedom' Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of the Sitwells. I know Dame Edith and her brothers, Sir Osbert and Sir Sacheverell, largely by reputation, and they impress me as an eccentric English phenomenon that has...
The American Scholar
“The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan appeared...
a week ago
17
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
My master plan to create a modern media empire A network of media organizations that support readers, not advertisers.
a week ago
Escaping Flatland
If you're facing a complicated decision, your first job isn't to find a solution, but to understand... Some housekeeping:
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What May Save Us Is Conversation' A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation....
a week ago
21
a week ago
A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation. All work or worked in the past for the same government agency in Washington, D.C. Conversation tended toward the traditionally male – politics, sports, health. Inevitably, opinions...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Living Culture Is a Swarm of Moments' Much on my mind of late has been that victim of literary taxonomy, the “minor” writer. We glibly...
a week ago
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a week ago
Much on my mind of late has been that victim of literary taxonomy, the “minor” writer. We glibly sentence writers to one of two categories, “major” and “minor,” a sort of Manichean system of classification that leaves little room for the most welcome writer of all – a good one we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passages of Especial Beauty' Quietly, without much critical hemming and hawing, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) has become for...
a week ago
9
a week ago
Quietly, without much critical hemming and hawing, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) has become for this reader a major minor writer. I’m reminded of this by a friend who tells me he’s reading Smith’s autobiography, Unforgotten Years (1938), a title that sneaks up on you in its...
The American Scholar
The Art of Doing Politics Sarah Stein Lubrano on prioritizing relationships over rationality The post The Art of...
a week ago
37
a week ago
Sarah Stein Lubrano on prioritizing relationships over rationality The post The Art of <em>Doing</em> Politics appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
How I crowdfunded a $60,000+ book advance Plus, my plans for the book from here.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Shun the Man of Sorrow' Part of me resists the notion of books as medicine, as one-dose cures for life’s pains and...
a week ago
16
a week ago
Part of me resists the notion of books as medicine, as one-dose cures for life’s pains and disappointments. Too often, volumes touted for their therapeutic qualities are accompanied by nasty side effects: lousy writing, including clichés and soft-headed reasoning. Such books risk...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Yield Myself to Tombstones and Oblivion' Today’s AI-driven writing, even when composed by a verifiable human being, has little in common with...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
Today’s AI-driven writing, even when composed by a verifiable human being, has little in common with the baroque extravagance of Sir Thomas Browne’s prose. He is a non-utilitarian word-lover’s delight, without writing nonsense. Among writers most often cited by the Oxford English...
The Marginalian
Dawn: A Watercolor Ode to the Primeval Conversation Between Our Living Planet and Its Dying Star “You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
“You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the present,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his transcendent portrait of the transition from sleep to wakefulness. The experience of waking — that phase transition between the liquid...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Disposed to Make Concessions to the World' Philip Larkin, famously childless, first drafted “Take One Home for the Kiddies” in 1954. Then it...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
Philip Larkin, famously childless, first drafted “Take One Home for the Kiddies” in 1954. Then it was titled “Pets.” He completed the retitled poem on this date, August 13, in 1960, and included it in The Whitsun Weddings (1964):  “On shallow straw, in shadeless glass, Huddled by...
The American Scholar
The Lady Vet The post The Lady Vet appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
By all means, let private equity save capitalism We should get Wall Street involved too.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Come Back Now As You Were in Youth' “Whisper to me some beautiful secret that you remember from life.”  Donald Justice often skirts...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
“Whisper to me some beautiful secret that you remember from life.”  Donald Justice often skirts sentimentality in his poems, teetering at the lip of a cheap conceit, but preserves his integrity with craft and an intelligent capacity for nostalgia coupled with the gift of...
The American Scholar
“Hitler’s First Photograph” by Wislawa Szymborska Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hitler’s First Photograph” by Wislawa Szymborska appeared...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hitler’s First Photograph” by Wislawa Szymborska appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Wonder, Play, and How to Be More Alive We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in,...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness. Wonder — that edge state on the...
Wuthering...
A readalong of Christopher Marlowe and friends - I fear they know we sent the poison'd broth Please join me this fall in reading the plays of Christopher Marlowe and some of his contemporaries,...
2 weeks ago
15
2 weeks ago
Please join me this fall in reading the plays of Christopher Marlowe and some of his contemporaries, if that sounds enjoyable to you.  The more I have thought about it, the more enjoyable it sounds to me.  I have many questions. Below is an attempt at a schedule, with a play...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old News Flutters From a Bottom Drawer' Like most family history, it started as a rumor, a titillating story without context, myth-like....
2 weeks ago
16
2 weeks ago
Like most family history, it started as a rumor, a titillating story without context, myth-like. My mother had four brothers, three of whom were older. The oldest were Kenneth and Clifford. We never met the latter. Uncle Ken lived in Tampa, Fla., and we visited him in 1968, annus...
The American Scholar
Anne Labovitz To see and be seen The post Anne Labovitz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Entertain As Well As Illuminate' “I was the sort of boy who always connected life and art, mixing them up, feeling the way art lives...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
“I was the sort of boy who always connected life and art, mixing them up, feeling the way art lives in time and out of it, just like the human mind and imagination.”  Spend enough time reading enough books and you will encounter a strangely familiar character: a funhouse mirror...
The Marginalian
Things Become Other Things: Walking, Forgiveness, and Belonging in the Mountains of Japan Steps are events, experiments, miniature rebellions against gravity and chance. With each step, we...
2 weeks ago
16
2 weeks ago
Steps are events, experiments, miniature rebellions against gravity and chance. With each step, we fall and then we catch ourselves, we choose to go one way and not another. The foot falls and worlds of possibility rise in its shadow. Every step remaps the psychogeography of the...