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The Marginalian
The Canyon and the Meaning of Life Anything you polish with attention will become a mirror. Anything to which you give yourself fully,...
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Anything you polish with attention will become a mirror. Anything to which you give yourself fully, vest all your strength and risk all your vulnerability, will return you to your life annealed, magnified, both unselved and more deeply yourself. It can be a garden, or a desert,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Martyrs of a Future World Religion' A longtime reader and fellow blogger shares with me a taste for aphoristic writing, prose that...
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A longtime reader and fellow blogger shares with me a taste for aphoristic writing, prose that is concise, of course, but also dense with meaning and often packing a sting. Aphorisms can be marketed as such but often they appear as a functional part of a larger text. George Eliot...
The American Scholar
Flummoxed The post Flummoxed appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A New Past' Robert Conquest writing thirty-one years ago:  “Literature is the expression of our whole past, of...
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Robert Conquest writing thirty-one years ago:  “Literature is the expression of our whole past, of our whole context in life and time – and not only ours. Anatole France said that the word pleurer (to cry, to weep) in French is different from the same sort of word in every other...
The American Scholar
“Parachutes My Love, Could Carry Us Higher” by Barbara Guest Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Parachutes My Love, Could Carry Us Higher” by Barbara Guest...
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Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Parachutes My Love, Could Carry Us Higher” by Barbara Guest appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Essays in Flesh and Bone' One of my friends is reliably cheerful. We should all have friends like him. His emails and...
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One of my friends is reliably cheerful. We should all have friends like him. His emails and telephone calls are never annoyingly cloying, in the sense that they knock me out of whatever self-centered snit I’m nursing. Without ever saying so, he reminds me that I have it pretty...
The American Scholar
Jeanne F. Jalandoni Weaving past and present together The post Jeanne F. Jalandoni appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Is It Not Wonderful to Be Alive: Edward Lear’s Parrots In the late summer of 1832, England was set aflame with wonder — a glimpse of something wild and...
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In the late summer of 1832, England was set aflame with wonder — a glimpse of something wild and flamboyant, shimmering with the lush firstness of a world untrammeled by the boot of civilization. Edward Lear (May 12, 1812–January 29, 1888), barely out of his teens, had been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Minority Pursuit' In comparison to the late D.G. Myers, I’m a quietist, waiting for something to happen rather...
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In comparison to the late D.G. Myers, I’m a quietist, waiting for something to happen rather than stepping on the accelerator myself. He supplied me with more ideas and inspirations than I was ever able to offer him. A longtime reader reminds me of “The Function of Book Blogging...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Work Must Be Perfect' How do we reconcile the saddest of English writers being at the same time among the wittiest?...
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How do we reconcile the saddest of English writers being at the same time among the wittiest? And when I say “saddest,” I don’t mean depressed or suicidal; rather, wistful, ever aware of human ephemerality, calibrating his words until they attain the precise edge of irony he...
The Marginalian
Why Bats Shouldn’t Exist: The Limits of Knowledge, the Pitfalls of Prediction, and the Triumph of... Prediction is the sharpest tool the human animal has devised — the chisel with which we sculpted...
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Prediction is the sharpest tool the human animal has devised — the chisel with which we sculpted survival out of chance, the fulcrum by which we lifted civilization out of survival. Among the greatest gifts of the imagination, that crowning curio of consciousness, is our ability...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Were Not' An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a...
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An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a function of age. A widower in retirement from teaching high school, he seems no longer the buoyant social creature I’ve always known. In fact, I envied his gregariousness when we...
The American Scholar
Michael Douglas Explains It All Jessa Crispin on what the actor’s roles tell us about the crisis of masculinity The post Michael...
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Jessa Crispin on what the actor’s roles tell us about the crisis of masculinity The post Michael Douglas Explains It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'After the Rain, Perhaps, Something Will Show' Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average...
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Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average about three pounds and contains 86 billion neurons. That’s our birthright, and we did nothing to earn it. We tend to operate our brains passively, ignoring most available perceptions....
The Elysian
How much of the planet should we harm for our comfort? Becky Chambers’ gentle sci-fi on the right amount of carbon, AC, airplanes, and yachts.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Without Any Hope of Fame or Money' Friends and relatives, people whose judgment I actually trust, have urged me to move Anecdotal...
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Friends and relatives, people whose judgment I actually trust, have urged me to move Anecdotal Evidence from Blogger to Substack and I don’t understand why. All I need is a place to write, the “platform” is of no importance. I’d do this in a notebook, like in the old days,...
The American Scholar
Snake in the Grass The post Snake in the Grass appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
This Space
The way of arrival Two intellectual memoirs dominated my reading over Spring, three if WG Sebald's Silent Catastrophes...
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Two intellectual memoirs dominated my reading over Spring, three if WG Sebald's Silent Catastrophes can be included given that its analysis of the careers of various Austrian writers illuminates Sebald's own literary trajectory.1 Peter Brown's Journeys of a Mind: A Life in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Always Summer, Always the Golden Hour' I fight the urge to wallow in nostalgia but it seeps back in like moisture in an unfinished...
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I fight the urge to wallow in nostalgia but it seeps back in like moisture in an unfinished basement. I take that image from my childhood home. The walls and floor were bare concrete. Stacks of newspaper and lumber felt flesh-like with dampness. Down there it was always chilly,...
The American Scholar
“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Uncoding Creativity in the Age of AI: What Makes a Great Poem, What Makes a Great Storyteller, and... I once asked ChatGPT to write a poem about a total solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It...
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I once asked ChatGPT to write a poem about a total solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It returned a dozen couplets of cliches that touched nothing, changed nothing in me. The AI had the whole of the English language at its disposal — a lexicon surely manyfold the poet’s...
The Elysian
Participatory science makes everyone a researcher So we can study the Earth at scale.
a month ago
The American Scholar
Why Go On? The post Why Go On? appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
On agency Or, how to handle being sentenced to freedom, and handle it effectively, and authentically, and...
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Or, how to handle being sentenced to freedom, and handle it effectively, and authentically, and responsibly
Anecdotal Evidence
"Some of His Work Was Gold' From a dusty, thoroughly disorganized Houston bookstore I bought a copy of Turnstile One: A...
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From a dusty, thoroughly disorganized Houston bookstore I bought a copy of Turnstile One: A Literary Miscellany (Turnstile Press, 1948), edited by V.S. Pritchett. Much of its literary quality shames today's readers and writers. It collects poems, stories, essays and reviews...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Absolute Anthology' The American poet Len Krisak asks a question common to all serious readers, one that, if...
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The American poet Len Krisak asks a question common to all serious readers, one that, if posed privately, serves as an honest way to reveal one’s deeper tastes without the social pressures of fashion and snobbery. Think of it as a variation on the “Desert Island” parlor game. It...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Should Never Mention It' Spoken by a man after my own heart:  “You must grant me a dispensation for saying any thing, whether...
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Spoken by a man after my own heart:  “You must grant me a dispensation for saying any thing, whether it be sense or nonsense, upon the subject of politics. It is truly a matter in which I am so little interested, that, were it not that it sometimes serves me for a theme when I...
The Marginalian
A Defense of Joy One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with...
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One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a countercultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite the abounding sorrow we barely survive but because of it, because joy — like music,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Great Euthanasia' I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once...
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I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once tried tallying his death-themed poems and lost count. Here’s a sample: “How to Behave When Dead,” “Symbols of Love and Death,” “In Defense of Forest Lawn,” “At the Tomb of the...
The American Scholar
America the Beautiful The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America...
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The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America the Beautiful appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Lord, Make Me Not Too Rich. Nor Make Me Poor' “In spite of the Deconstructionists who say that communication is not really possible, we most of us...
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“In spite of the Deconstructionists who say that communication is not really possible, we most of us manage to honor stop signs, and we all honor the dollar sign, whether or not we are willing to admit it.”  In 1995, R.L. Barth published The Golden Calf: Poems of Money, edited by...
The American Scholar
Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on...
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Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
What I Read in June 2025 - A life of agony was all for naught. My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded.  I read short, difficult...
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My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded.  I read short, difficult books in French, and accidentally read several grim, sad, violent books, alongside some playful nonsense.   FICTION The Field of Life and Death (1935), Xiao Hong – For example.  Ninety...
The Marginalian
Vision of the Womb and Vision of the Brain: H.D. on the Two Kinds of Seeing and the Key to Over-mind... “One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational...
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“One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.” As more and more of our senses are being amputated by the blade of our image-centric culture, reducing the vast and delicate sensorium of human...
The Elysian
Maybe an exowomb is better than pregnancy The Pod Generation’s near-future satire pits nature against technology. Which is the better curator?
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Looking in the Right Direction' News of certain public deaths remains rooted in memory to an indelible time and place. Famously,...
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News of certain public deaths remains rooted in memory to an indelible time and place. Famously, millions of mundane lives intersected forever with the assassination of President Kennedy, which people recall in vivid detail more than sixty years later their reactions at that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will We Ever Be So Young Again?' On July 2, 1944, the Polish poet and fiction writer Tadeusz Borowski begins a letter to his mother...
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On July 2, 1944, the Polish poet and fiction writer Tadeusz Borowski begins a letter to his mother written while he was a prisoner in Auschwitz:  “What’s of greatest interest first: the eggs are amazingly fresh and very much desired, the butter is wonderful, straight from the...
The American Scholar
Big Rock, High Plateau The post Big Rock, High Plateau appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Superintending What He Cannot Regulate' In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the...
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In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the Y.” I have three sons, no daughters, and my brother, who died last summer, was my sole sibling. My mother had five brothers, no sisters. My father, two brothers, no sisters, etc....
The American Scholar
“The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The Elysian
How can we rewild the Earth at scale? From global targets to backyard projects
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fun Which Is Ebullient All Over Yours' A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend...
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A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend to underline, boldface and italicize their every attempt at a pun, most of which are already feeble. Thus, the pun’s bad reputation and the ensuing groans. In contrast I love a good,...
The American Scholar
Greg Ito The life cycle of a candle The post Greg Ito appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Uncaging the Bird in the Mind: William Henry Hudson and the Gift of the Ruin of Your Best Laid Plans “The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote...
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“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote Milton in Paradise Lost. Because the mind (which may in the end be a full-body phenomenon) is the cup that lifts the world to our lips to be tasted — a taste we call reality — it is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Ledge Itself Invents the Leap' Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of...
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Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of rationalism: “Explain it, and it goes away.” As a kid I fell for that, almost literally, when I tried to muscle my way with sheer will power past the Terminal Tower in downtown...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Seminal Crime of the 20th Century' Some years ago I happened on an account of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination that read like a...
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Some years ago I happened on an account of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination that read like a coroner’s report. The author described in minute medical detail what happened after John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger – the blood, bone fragments, tissue damage in the president’s...
The Elysian
Democrats Need a Mamdani-Type to Win If you're still talking about his rent freeze and grocery policies, you're missing the point.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Anima: One Woman’s Search for Meaning in the Footsteps of Bulgarian Mountain Shepherds "All our lives we perform tasks while waiting for something to click into place. For somewhere to...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Susceptible to Education' I grew up fetishizing a university education. I knew no one in my family or in my working-class...
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I grew up fetishizing a university education. I knew no one in my family or in my working-class neighborhood who had “gone to college,” as the common phrase had it. In my experience, that status was confined to doctors and teachers. My father was a high-school dropout....
The American Scholar
Once in a Lifetime Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared...
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Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared first on The American Scholar.