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The American Scholar
Reasons for Living The post Reasons for Living appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
115

Reasons for Living

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
The post Reasons for Living appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
The Unjolly Green Giant How C. F.  Seabrook became the Lear of the vegetable fields The post The Unjolly Green Giant...
2 weeks ago
101

The Unjolly Green Giant

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
How C. F.  Seabrook became the Lear of the vegetable fields The post The Unjolly Green Giant appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Natural Thing in the World' Why write? Indulge my glibness: Why not? Still in high school, I learned I had little...
2 weeks ago
76

'The Most Natural Thing in the World'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Why write? Indulge my glibness: Why not? Still in high school, I learned I had little understanding of a given subject until I tried to express it in a precise selection of words, words that corresponded not to my feelings or theories but to what I could perceive. Not gushing – a...
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The Elysian
How Silicon Valley got rich And how everyone else can get rich too.
4 weeks ago
16

How Silicon Valley got rich

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
And how everyone else can get rich too.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'At a Quarter a Tome' I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I...
2 weeks ago
16

'At a Quarter a Tome'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I don’t mean what I pretended to do while in the company of professors, though many of them assigned books published in soft covers. I mean self-assigned literature, beginning as a kid...
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Anecdotal Evidence
Compatible Observations of Great Men Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed...
4 weeks ago
14

Compatible Observations of Great Men

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed instinctively to the past, against what he saw as the corruption of language, manners and morality of his own time, but Travels in Arabia Deserta is not backward-looking for its own...
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Wuthering...
Not Shakespeare - a preliminary, semi-formed invitation to read plays by Shakespeare's... Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do.  I’ve been wanting to return to the plays of...
2 weeks ago
13

Not Shakespeare - a preliminary, semi-formed invitation to read plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do.  I’ve been wanting to return to the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson and so on.  The Spanish Tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, The Knight of the Burning Pestle,  Bartholomew Fair.  It has been a while...
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Wuthering...
What I Read in May 2025 – “There’s the store that’s shaped like a duck,” Franca said. First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony...
3 weeks ago
13

What I Read in May 2025 – “There’s the store that’s shaped like a duck,” Franca said.

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony Powell.  If this keeps happening I will have to think of something or even do something.  Here they are: A skippable piece of throat-clearing about the roman fleuve. What I think...
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Escaping Flatland
On the pleasure of reading private notebooks One reason I like this genre is that people censor themselves less when they are writing in private.
4 weeks ago
12

On the pleasure of reading private notebooks

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
One reason I like this genre is that people censor themselves less when they are writing in private.
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The Marginalian
Imagine Water Otherwise: Robert Macfarlane on the Personhood of Rivers and the Meaning of Aliveness “Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless...
3 weeks ago
12

Imagine Water Otherwise: Robert Macfarlane on the Personhood of Rivers and the Meaning of Aliveness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless “refutation” of time. “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Nietzsche wrote a century earlier in his directive on how to find yourself....
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The Marginalian
The Arguers: A Charming Illustrated Parable about the Absurdity of Self-righteousness Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and...
2 weeks ago
12

The Arguers: A Charming Illustrated Parable about the Absurdity of Self-righteousness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and disorientation, is that they turn human beings into opinion machines. We dope our pain and confusion with false certainties that stifle the willingness to understand (the nuances of...
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The Marginalian
Mushrooms and Our Search for Meaning This essay was originally published as the cover story in the Summer 2025 issue of Orion Magazine....
3 weeks ago
11

Mushrooms and Our Search for Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
This essay was originally published as the cover story in the Summer 2025 issue of Orion Magazine. “Who are you?” the caterpillar barks at Alice from atop the giant mushroom, and Alice, never quite having considered the question, mutters a child’s version of Emily Dickinson’s...
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This Space
On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle The premise of this multi-volume novel is simple: a modern-day French woman called Tara finds...
2 weeks ago
11

On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
The premise of this multi-volume novel is simple: a modern-day French woman called Tara finds herself stuck inside the eighteenth day of a November. The nineteenth never appears. On the 121st iteration of the same day she begins to write by describing the sounds made by her...
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The Elysian
Creating a global safety net without nation-states A Guest Lecture featuring Sondre Rasch, co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing.
3 weeks ago
11

Creating a global safety net without nation-states

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
A Guest Lecture featuring Sondre Rasch, co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing.
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The American Scholar
The Birthmark The post The Birthmark appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 weeks ago
11

The Birthmark

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
The post The Birthmark appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Escaping Flatland
Caring for others At Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, I see a passport fall out of the back pocket of a man and...
2 weeks ago
11

Caring for others

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
At Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, I see a passport fall out of the back pocket of a man and immediately (at least) three strangers call out.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'We Shuttle Back and Forth' Metempsychosis is another word I learned from Ulysses. Up till then I used the more plebian-sounding...
2 weeks ago
10

'We Shuttle Back and Forth'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Metempsychosis is another word I learned from Ulysses. Up till then I used the more plebian-sounding reincarnation. In the fourth chapter, “Calypso,” Molly Bloom is in bed reading a novel, Ruby: Pride of the Ring. She encounters metempsychosis in the text and asks Leopold, who...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Things Which Make a Life of Ease' R.L. Barth, our finest living epigrammist (admittedly, not a vast job description), has sent me his...
3 weeks ago
10

'The Things Which Make a Life of Ease'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
R.L. Barth, our finest living epigrammist (admittedly, not a vast job description), has sent me his translation of a well-known epigram by Martial, the Roman master of the pithy form. Bob found it among his papers and doesn’t remember making it. “[T]ranslating something [Ben]...
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The Elysian
TERRAFORM: An essay collection about the future of our planet Six writers explore the future of our world for an online series and print pamphlet.
2 weeks ago
10

TERRAFORM: An essay collection about the future of our planet

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Six writers explore the future of our world for an online series and print pamphlet.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'What He Knows Who Looks Into Life and Sees' Most of my preoccupations lie elsewhere but I retain a casual interest in what used to be called...
2 weeks ago
10

'What He Knows Who Looks Into Life and Sees'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Most of my preoccupations lie elsewhere but I retain a casual interest in what used to be called field biology. That is, the non-molecular, outside-the-laboratory practice of observing plants and animals, even in the middle of Houston. The motives are pleasure, wonder and...
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The Marginalian
The Wanting Monster: An Almost Unbearably Tender Illustrated Spell Against the Curse of Not Enough Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your...
4 weeks ago
10

The Wanting Monster: An Almost Unbearably Tender Illustrated Spell Against the Curse of Not Enough

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your serenity, the hammer that shatters your wholeness — to want anything is to deem your life incomplete without it. It is a perpetual motion machine that keeps you restlessly...
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Wuthering...
A draft Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus In case yesterday’s invitation was a bit abstract, here is my current sense of a twenty-play...
2 weeks ago
10

A draft Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
In case yesterday’s invitation was a bit abstract, here is my current sense of a twenty-play Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus that I would like to investigate beginning next fall.  I’ve read twelve of them. Please note that almost every date below should be preceded by “c.” ...
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The Marginalian
Silence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine... "Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world...
2 weeks ago
10

Silence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine Monastery

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
"Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world seems to sit at the center of me."
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The American Scholar
On (Middle-Class) Frugality Does cutting costs mean robbing oneself of life’s small delights? The post On (Middle-Class)...
3 weeks ago
9

On (Middle-Class) Frugality

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Does cutting costs mean robbing oneself of life’s small delights? The post On (Middle-Class) Frugality appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
“The Last One” by W. S. Merwin Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last One” by W. S. Merwin appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
9

“The Last One” by W. S. Merwin

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last One” by W. S. Merwin appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'I’ve Been Setting the Table for the Dead' “Sometimes the what takes over so much that the how disappears. I think poetry works best when these...
a week ago
9

'I’ve Been Setting the Table for the Dead'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
“Sometimes the what takes over so much that the how disappears. I think poetry works best when these are indistinguishable, when they keep such good balance that you don't feel you're being preached to or grasping at the abstract.”  Back in the early 1990s I had a chance to meet...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'A Peaceabale Morning' Boys of my age grew up fighting Nazis and Japs. We inherited our fathers’ war and were too old to...
3 weeks ago
9

'A Peaceabale Morning'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Boys of my age grew up fighting Nazis and Japs. We inherited our fathers’ war and were too old to “play Army” – always the phrase – by the time Vietnam heated up. A German refugee, Mrs. Becker, lived next door and we were ordered to kill only Japs if we were playing near her...
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The American Scholar
A Pair of Elephants The post A Pair of Elephants appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
9

A Pair of Elephants

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
The post A Pair of Elephants appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
“In the Summer” by Nizar Qabbani Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “In the Summer” by Nizar Qabbani appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
9

“In the Summer” by Nizar Qabbani

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “In the Summer” by Nizar Qabbani appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
Democracy should happen online A Guest Lecture with Margo Loor, co-founder of the Estonian participatory democracy platform Citizen...
a week ago
9

Democracy should happen online

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
A Guest Lecture with Margo Loor, co-founder of the Estonian participatory democracy platform Citizen OS.
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The American Scholar
Family Values Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first...
2 weeks ago
9

Family Values

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
Our community round has opened—let's fund this book! + Join our call tonight!
4 weeks ago
9

Our community round has opened—let's fund this book!

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
+ Join our call tonight!
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The Marginalian
Against the Pleasurable Luxury of Despair and the Aridity of Self-pity: Doris Lessing on the... "The choice before us... is not merely a question of preventing an evil, but of strengthening a...
2 weeks ago
9

Against the Pleasurable Luxury of Despair and the Aridity of Self-pity: Doris Lessing on the Artist’s Task in Trying Times

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
"The choice before us... is not merely a question of preventing an evil, but of strengthening a vision of good which may defeat evil."
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonly Lost Because It Never Was Deserved' Often, I hardly recognize my younger self. I did foolish things I would never contemplate today....
3 weeks ago
9

'Commonly Lost Because It Never Was Deserved'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Often, I hardly recognize my younger self. I did foolish things I would never contemplate today. My self-centeredness was appalling, my taste frequently shameful, even in books. I read critics uncritically and was cowed by their fame and influence. Taste doesn’t arrive...
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The American Scholar
Ask Already The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
9

Ask Already

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Information of a High School Janitor' A former colleague reminded me of the babysitting job I was given by a newspaper editor some...
2 weeks ago
9

'The Information of a High School Janitor'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
A former colleague reminded me of the babysitting job I was given by a newspaper editor some forty years ago. I was the court reporter, covering every level from city police court to the New York Court of Appeals, plus the federal court in the beautiful Art Deco building on...
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The American Scholar
Stephanie Santana Preserving family history The post Stephanie Santana appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
9

Stephanie Santana

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Preserving family history The post Stephanie Santana appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
We can terraform the Earth—not just Mars If we can revive a dead planet, we can revive our own.
2 weeks ago
8

We can terraform the Earth—not just Mars

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
If we can revive a dead planet, we can revive our own.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'To Illustrate With Marginal Notes' I no longer write in books, a decision I made decades ago that I occasionally regret. It came...
3 weeks ago
8

'To Illustrate With Marginal Notes'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
I no longer write in books, a decision I made decades ago that I occasionally regret. It came to feel like defacement. But it’s interesting to see what attracted, delighted or puzzled my younger self. Here are the three books on my shelves most heavily underlined and...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'When the Heart is Full . . .' “You say truly, that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I...
4 weeks ago
8

'When the Heart is Full . . .'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 weeks ago
“You say truly, that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I really think those have the worst of it who are left by us, if we are true friends. I have felt more (I fancy) in the loss of Mr. Gay, than I shall suffer in the thought of going away...
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The Marginalian
The Whole of It Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form...
a week ago
8

The Whole of It

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form of living against it and not with it — the pain of loss, aching for what has been and no longer is; the pain of longing, aching for what could be but is not yet and may never be;...
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The Elysian
Newsletter bundles don't work A Guest Lecture with Even Armstrong on why he left Every to go independent.
2 weeks ago
8

Newsletter bundles don't work

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
A Guest Lecture with Even Armstrong on why he left Every to go independent.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'He Thrived on Giving Offense' Why did my teachers devote more class time to John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell –...
2 weeks ago
7

'He Thrived on Giving Offense'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Why did my teachers devote more class time to John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell – American exemplars of the Age of Thrice-Named Writers -- than to Lord Byron? After more than half a century, I can only speculate. Literary patriotism? We spent a lot of time reading...
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The Marginalian
The One Hundred Milliseconds Between the World and You: Oliver Sacks on Perception “If the doors of perception were cleansed,” William Blake wrote, “everything would appear to man as...
3 weeks ago
7

The One Hundred Milliseconds Between the World and You: Oliver Sacks on Perception

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,” William Blake wrote, “everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” But we are finite creatures, in time and in space, and there is a limit to how much reality we can bear — evolution gave us consciousness so that we may sieve the...
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The Marginalian
The Grammar of Fantasy and the Fantastic Binomial: Beloved Italian Children’s Book Author Gianny... "The mind forms a whole. Its creativity must be cultivated in all directions."
2 weeks ago
7

The Grammar of Fantasy and the Fantastic Binomial: Beloved Italian Children’s Book Author Gianny Rodari on Creativity and the Key to Great Storytelling

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
"The mind forms a whole. Its creativity must be cultivated in all directions."
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Spirit of Urbanity Incarnate' Last week Nige wrote about a book previously unknown to me: The Eighteen Nineties (1913; rev....
a week ago
7

'The Spirit of Urbanity Incarnate'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Last week Nige wrote about a book previously unknown to me: The Eighteen Nineties (1913; rev. 1922) by Holbrook Jackson. I’ve read only Jackson’s The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1930) and browsed in some of his other book-related titles. I bought the Anatomy in 1998 from a used...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pictures and the Books That Here Surround Me'' Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in...
3 weeks ago
7

'The Pictures and the Books That Here Surround Me''

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in one of the lesser-known literary magazines – the British Medical Journal’s Supportive and Palliative Care, the September 2014 issue. Coincidentally, that’s the month my friend...
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The Elysian
No, we shouldn't return to the climate of the 18th century Improving the climate is a better goal than trying to fight change.
a week ago
7

No, we shouldn't return to the climate of the 18th century

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Improving the climate is a better goal than trying to fight change.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Cultivation As a Proficient Amateur' Perhaps the most interesting and even important person in Montaigne’s life – especially for...
3 weeks ago
7

'Cultivation As a Proficient Amateur'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Perhaps the most interesting and even important person in Montaigne’s life – especially for his readers -- was not his wife nor his friend Étienne de La Boétie, whose death in 1563 left him bereft, but Marie de Gournay (1565-1645), the model of an autodidact, who taught herself...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'[C]onservatives Should Embrace the Novel' Fifteen years ago, in a blog post titled “Conservative novels,”  my friend the late D.G. Myers...
2 weeks ago
7

'[C]onservatives Should Embrace the Novel'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago
Fifteen years ago, in a blog post titled “Conservative novels,”  my friend the late D.G. Myers critiqued a “top-ten” list of that literary species assembled by a writer at The National Review. David called the list “strangely disappointing,” and it’s tough to argue with that...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'It Brought Us This Far' Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a...
a week ago
7

'It Brought Us This Far'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a reader asks. His assumption, never directly articulated, is that reading is compensation for the absence of something far more important. I suppose people have been facing...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Idiot Hopefulness or Fathomless Exasperation' When my oldest son was about seven and already a movie enthusiast, we drove up to the Crandall...
a week ago
7

'Idiot Hopefulness or Fathomless Exasperation'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
When my oldest son was about seven and already a movie enthusiast, we drove up to the Crandall Library in Glens Falls, N.Y. to watch Laurel and Hardy movies. I’d seen a notice in the paper. A film collector brought his own projector and a box of 16mm reels and set up in one of...
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The American Scholar
“Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon appeared first on The...
a week ago
7

“Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
The Majesty of Mountains and the Mountains of the Mind Mountains are some of our best metaphors for the mind and for the spirit, but they are also living...
3 weeks ago
7

The Majesty of Mountains and the Mountains of the Mind

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Mountains are some of our best metaphors for the mind and for the spirit, but they are also living entities, sovereign and staggering. I remember the first time I saw a mountain from an airplane — forests miniaturized to moss, rivers to capillaries, the Earth crumpled like a...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'A Person With No Public Appeal' Interviews with writers are now accepted as a discrete literary form, like rondeaus and...
3 weeks ago
6

'A Person With No Public Appeal'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Interviews with writers are now accepted as a discrete literary form, like rondeaus and villanelles, probably for the same reason people read the biographies of writers whose work they have never read. I suppose the Paris Review encouraged the trend starting in the Fifties by...
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The American Scholar
No Murder in the Mews The post No Murder in the Mews appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
6

No Murder in the Mews

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
The post No Murder in the Mews appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Full of the Little Obscurities' “A man may profess to understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges, even...
a week ago
6

'Full of the Little Obscurities'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
“A man may profess to understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges, even to himself, that he understands his own wife.”  Anecdotal Evidence attracts an admirably knowledgeable set of readers, mostly proud amateurs like its author. As best I can judge,...
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The Marginalian
Against Death: Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti on Grieving a Parent, Grieving the World, and What Makes... The year is 1937. Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994) — Bulgarian, Jewish, living in...
a week ago
6

Against Death: Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti on Grieving a Parent, Grieving the World, and What Makes Life Worth Living

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
The year is 1937. Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994) — Bulgarian, Jewish, living in Austria as the Nazis are rising to power — has just lost his mother; his mother, whose bottomless love had nurtured the talent that would win him the Nobel Prize in his seventies; his...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Them at Any Rate Be Your Acquaintances' “Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”  An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a...
a week ago
6

'Let Them at Any Rate Be Your Acquaintances'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
“Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”  An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a sort of litmus test to judge personality and values, might be to place your subject in a large, well-stocked library (or bookstore), wire him for blood pressure, heart rate, skin...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Between Virgil and Young People Engrossed in Rock' In a 2009 interview with a publication in Barcelona, Spain, Adam Zagajewski is asked a question...
6 days ago
5

'Between Virgil and Young People Engrossed in Rock'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 days ago
In a 2009 interview with a publication in Barcelona, Spain, Adam Zagajewski is asked a question about political correctness, euphemisms and other debasements of language. He replies: “There is the harsher side of existence -- disease and death -- and the loftier reasons for...
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The American Scholar
Jeremy Spoke in Class Today On guns, MTV, Stephen King, and the nightmare from which we cannot awake The post Jeremy Spoke in...
3 weeks ago
5

Jeremy Spoke in Class Today

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
On guns, MTV, Stephen King, and the nightmare from which we cannot awake The post Jeremy Spoke in Class Today appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
The Justice Worker Rebecca Sandefur’s mission is to provide help to tens of millions of Americans in solving their...
3 weeks ago
5

The Justice Worker

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Rebecca Sandefur’s mission is to provide help to tens of millions of Americans in solving their legal problems The post The Justice Worker appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
An online version of Da Vinci's journal? Marginalia: An experiment sharing notes from the margins of my research.
a week ago
5

An online version of Da Vinci's journal?

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
Marginalia: An experiment sharing notes from the margins of my research.
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The American Scholar
The Rascal of Pont-Aven Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life The post The Rascal of Pont-Aven appeared first on...
3 weeks ago
5

The Rascal of Pont-Aven

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life The post The Rascal of Pont-Aven appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'It Pulls the Reader In' I grew up observing the Holy Trinity, the literary one: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. Faith told me...
a week ago
5

'It Pulls the Reader In'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago
I grew up observing the Holy Trinity, the literary one: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. Faith told me these were the foundational figures who would sustain us. Reason and a lifetime of reading have confirmed my faith. I think of them as formulating the cultural oxygen that sustains...
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The Marginalian
How to Be a Stone: Three Poems for Trusting Time If you want to befriend time — which is how you come to befriend life — turn to stone. Climb a...
6 days ago
5

How to Be a Stone: Three Poems for Trusting Time

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 days ago
If you want to befriend time — which is how you come to befriend life — turn to stone. Climb a mountain and listen to the conversation between eons encoded in each stripe of rock. Walk a beach and comb your fingers through the golden dust that was once a mountain. Pick up a...
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The American Scholar
A Portrait of the Scholar The life of Ireland’s towering literary figure became a work of art in its own right The post A...
3 weeks ago
4

A Portrait of the Scholar

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
The life of Ireland’s towering literary figure became a work of art in its own right The post A Portrait of the Scholar appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Verse 31 from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore...
3 days ago
4

Verse 31 from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
The Art of Coping In a time of anger, frustration, and anxiety, the humanities have much to teach us about how to deal...
3 weeks ago
4

The Art of Coping

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
In a time of anger, frustration, and anxiety, the humanities have much to teach us about how to deal with life The post The Art of Coping appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
A self-governing forest Terra0 thinks nature should become economically independent.
4 days ago
3

A self-governing forest

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 days ago
Terra0 thinks nature should become economically independent.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'With Purple Prose and a Bad Actor’s Gestures' On April 9, 1778, Johnson and Boswell dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where Edward Gibbon...
5 days ago
3

'With Purple Prose and a Bad Actor’s Gestures'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 days ago
On April 9, 1778, Johnson and Boswell dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where Edward Gibbon and Davide Garrick, among others, were also present. The subject of translations, including Pope’s Homer, emerged. “We must try its effect as an English poem,” Johnson said, “that...
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The American Scholar
Crystal Ball The post Crystal Ball appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 days ago
3

Crystal Ball

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 days ago
The post Crystal Ball appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Escaping Flatland
The hare vaguely impressionistic reflections about what I've been up to + links to stuff I've enjoyed...
2 days ago
3

The hare

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 days ago
vaguely impressionistic reflections about what I've been up to + links to stuff I've enjoyed recently
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Needlessly Limited Accommodation' That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to...
4 days ago
3

'Needlessly Limited Accommodation'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 days ago
That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to stock their shelves, fill bulletin boards and placate administrators, is well-known and nobody says much about it. I’m uncertain what mysterious collective formulates this canon...
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The American Scholar
‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’ Why shouldn’t America’s federal buildings speak to us in a language encompassing the old as well as...
3 weeks ago
2

‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Why shouldn’t America’s federal buildings speak to us in a language encompassing the old as well as the new? The post ‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’ appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
A Fight With Cudgels Meditations on death, Goya, and the immutability of art The post A Fight With Cudgels appeared first...
3 weeks ago
2

A Fight With Cudgels

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Meditations on death, Goya, and the immutability of art The post A Fight With Cudgels appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Silly, Trivial Things You Did When Young' “Of course, you live life forward and think about it backwards.”  I’ve spent the last month or so...
3 days ago
2

'The Silly, Trivial Things You Did When Young'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 days ago
“Of course, you live life forward and think about it backwards.”  I’ve spent the last month or so thinking about the summer of 1973, when I visited Europe for the first time. This retrospective was prompted by my youngest son, who graduated in May from Rice University and the...
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The American Scholar
Sticking With It A sobering chronicle of our toxic times The post Sticking With It appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
2

Sticking With It

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
A sobering chronicle of our toxic times The post Sticking With It appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
A Blast of a Time The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon The post A Blast of a Time appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
2

A Blast of a Time

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon The post A Blast of a Time appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Divinations of the First Light: A Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science...
2 days ago
2

Divinations of the First Light: A Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 days ago
At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science with her famous comet discovery, astronomer Maria Mitchell confided in one of her Vassar students that she would rather have authored a great poem than discovered a comet. A...
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The American Scholar
Who Killed the Mercy Man? An obscure murder keeps resurfacing in Black story and song The post Who Killed the Mercy Man?...
3 weeks ago
2

Who Killed the Mercy Man?

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
An obscure murder keeps resurfacing in Black story and song The post Who Killed the Mercy Man? appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
When True Crime Became All Too Real How my family survived a harrowing home invasion The post When True Crime Became All Too Real...
3 weeks ago
2

When True Crime Became All Too Real

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
How my family survived a harrowing home invasion The post When True Crime Became All Too Real appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kitchen Perpetually Crowded with Savages' Jonathan Swift often stayed at Quilca, the country home of his friend the Rev. Thomas Sheridan...
2 days ago
2

'The Kitchen Perpetually Crowded with Savages'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 days ago
Jonathan Swift often stayed at Quilca, the country home of his friend the Rev. Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738) in County Cavan, Ireland. There he wrote portions of Gulliver’s Travels. Not surprisingly, Swift was an inspired kvetcher. There’s a long tradition of English writers...
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The American Scholar
Hiding in Plain Sight What happens when a progressive city is forced to reckon with its connections to an unjust past? The...
3 weeks ago
2

Hiding in Plain Sight

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
What happens when a progressive city is forced to reckon with its connections to an unjust past? The post Hiding in Plain Sight appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
What’s Not to Like? On similes, good and bad The post What’s Not to Like? appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
2

What’s Not to Like?

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
On similes, good and bad The post What’s Not to Like? appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Unbuilding the Mystery What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared...
3 weeks ago
2

Unbuilding the Mystery

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
We Contain Multitudes Why do so few of us exercise the many talents with which we are born? The post We Contain Multitudes...
3 weeks ago
2

We Contain Multitudes

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 weeks ago
Why do so few of us exercise the many talents with which we are born? The post We Contain Multitudes appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Once in a Lifetime Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared...
5 hours ago
2

Once in a Lifetime

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 hours ago
Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Neglected By-ways' Thomas Parker is a longtime reader and frequent commenter on this blog. On Monday’s post he recalled...
yesterday
1

'The Neglected By-ways'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

yesterday
Thomas Parker is a longtime reader and frequent commenter on this blog. On Monday’s post he recalled a passage he thought may have been the work of George Saintsbury. Unable to track it down for attribution, he quoted from uncertain memory: “Nothing pains me more than the...
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The Elysian
The future used to be better How contemporary art reflects our waning belief in progress.
2 days ago
1

The future used to be better

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 days ago
How contemporary art reflects our waning belief in progress.
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Susceptible to Education' I grew up fetishizing a university education. I knew no one in my family or in my working-class...
4 hours ago
1

'Susceptible to Education'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 hours ago
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....
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in August 2023 As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things.  Plenty of...
a year ago
421

Books I Read in August 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things.  Plenty of energy to read, though. With a respite in September, I should soon be able to write a bit on the Greek philosophers I have been reading.  The Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics work...
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Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Probably Riding Hello. I’m probably riding my bike. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
11 months ago
242

🔗 Probably Riding

from Naz Hamid — Journal + Links [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Hello. I’m probably riding my bike. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
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The American Scholar
Ho Ho Horror Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
171

Ho Ho Horror

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 366 ...
5 months ago
143

Open Thread 366

from Astral Codex Ten [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
...
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Anecdotal Evidence
'Yes, I'm Perfectly All Right' Had I been more clever or alert I might have heard and recorded my brother’s last words before he...
2 months ago
142

'Yes, I'm Perfectly All Right'

from Anecdotal Evidence [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
Had I been more clever or alert I might have heard and recorded my brother’s last words before he died last August in hospice. A reader asks about this, and I admit I blew it. For the last week or so of his life, Ken was unconscious, occasionally moaning when the nurses shifted...
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The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
over a year ago
131

The Paradox of Free Will

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
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The Perry Bible...
Us The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
128

Us

from The Perry Bible Fellowship [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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Naz Hamid
Kin The third culture difference. One of the hardest aspects of being a third culture kid and eventually...
2 months ago
125

Kin

from Naz Hamid [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
The third culture difference. One of the hardest aspects of being a third culture kid and eventually adult is the difficulty in the journey of your identity. When you're young, the movement and culture- and context-switching are par for the course — it comes with the literal...
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
over a year ago
122

Books I Read in May 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
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The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul "Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
114

The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone "The people we love are built into us."
over a year ago
114

May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"The people we love are built into us."
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Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my... Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
a year ago
109

Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my dreames then? what effect have dreames?

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are, because of Metamorphoses.  Venus and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion.  Icarus –...
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This Space
39 Books in one For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books:...
a year ago
109

39 Books in one

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books: PDF As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
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The Marginalian
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization "Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
over a year ago
108

What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
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This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
a year ago
107

39 Books: 2023

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
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Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
a year ago
107

Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
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The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison "We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
a year ago
105

The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
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The American Scholar
Savory or Apples? The post Savory or Apples? appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
104

Savory or Apples?

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
The post Savory or Apples? appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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...
10 months ago
104

Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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...
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The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
over a year ago
104

Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
How to bear the gravity of being.
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Wuthering...
The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams Sometime I will be able to make a diagram.  I have already made several diagrams.  I will sometime...
a year ago
104

The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram.  I have already made several diagrams.  I will sometime make a complete diagram and that will be a very long book...  (580) I am going to write about The Making of Americans as conceptual art, art where how it is made is a central part...
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This Space
39 Books: 2021 I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the...
a year ago
104

39 Books: 2021

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the many second-hand bookshops, all within walking distance. Many have closed over the years, such as Sandpiper, a remaindered bookshop in Kensington Gardens. It had a backroom in...
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Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
12 months ago
103

Three weeks in Portugal

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it: The results: B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study – relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
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The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
a year ago
103

The Importance of Being Different

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
over a year ago
103

Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
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The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life... "Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
a year ago
102

We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life Alive

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
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Wuthering...
Stein's style - Mostly no one will be wanting to listen, I am certain Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every one, not any I am just now hearing, and...
a year ago
102

Stein's style - Mostly no one will be wanting to listen, I am certain

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every one, not any I am just now hearing, and it is so completely an important thing, it is a complete thing in understanding, I am going on writing, I am going on now with a description of all whom Alfred Hersland came to know...
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Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning? new essay in Asterisk
9 months ago
101

Can we scale cultures that support learning?

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
new essay in Asterisk
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This Space
Literature likes to hide Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
over a year ago
101

Literature likes to hide

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's first book, published in 1954. It is difficult to find a copy now but you can download a digital version of the book via the link. The opening chapter is a 50-page study of "Tintern...
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The Marginalian
Do Not Spare Yourself The only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person — a dangerous desire too often...
5 months ago
100

Do Not Spare Yourself

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
The only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person — a dangerous desire too often mistaken for love — is wanting to save yourself, to spare yourself the disappointment and heartbreak and loss inseparable from being a creature with hopes and longings constantly...
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Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas “To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
a year ago
100

On having more interesting ideas

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
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The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness "Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
over a year ago
99

The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
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The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
over a year ago
99

Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
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The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
11 months ago
99

Every company should be owned by its employees

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
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The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
a year ago
99

I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
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This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
a year ago
98

39 Books: 2022

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe." This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
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The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction And publishing.
a year ago
98

My TEDx talk about the future of fiction

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
And publishing.
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This Space
The end of literature, part five "Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
11 months ago
98

The end of literature, part five

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
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Wuthering...
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days... My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic...
a year ago
98

Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days unless he has heard tales passed down from father to son

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1010), a slender 850 pages in Dick Davis’s 2006 prose (mostly) translation.  He added another 100 pages to the 2016 edition, whether filling out...
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The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the... Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
over a year ago
97

What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the Universe

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
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Escaping Flatland
Advice from my editor A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make...
a year ago
97

Advice from my editor

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I...
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023 The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
96

Books I Read in October 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long.  Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
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This Space
39 Books: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
a year ago
96

39 Books: 2003

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
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Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
a year ago
96

everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (1925).  It is a monster.  Why did I read it?  No, that is not the right questions.  There are good reasons to read...
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The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
a year ago
96

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Cudillero The post Cudillero appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
95

Cudillero

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
The post Cudillero appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Bitten The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
95

Bitten

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
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This Space
39 Books: 2012 Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
a year ago
95

39 Books: 2012

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
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The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
9 months ago
95

Do we still want the future desired by the past?

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
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The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence "We make our lives by what we love."
a year ago
95

Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We make our lives by what we love."
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The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain "Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
a year ago
95

The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
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This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
a year ago
94

39 Books: 1994

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
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This Space
39 Books: 2005 Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to...
a year ago
94

39 Books: 2005

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to disappear?" – the epigram to Enrique Vila-Matas's novel Montano's Malady. It's a line taken from Maurice Blanchot's Infinite Conversation, so I had to buy it. Later that year,...
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The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
11 months ago
94

Let the Last Thing Be Song

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
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This Space
39 Books: 2007 When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I...
a year ago
93

39 Books: 2007

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I write about a 350-page novel last read 17 years ago without taking several days to reread it? Answer: not at all, so I started reading. What good fortune! How well Hugo Wilcken...
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The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
a year ago
93

Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
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The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
a year ago
93

Red Tide Warning

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and neighbors who don’t always believe what they see The post Red Tide Warning appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
a year ago
93

Our Pets, Our Plates

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process The context is smarter than you.
10 months ago
93

Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
The context is smarter than you.
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Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
11 months ago
93

Garlic and gravel

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
fragments
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This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
a year ago
92

Kafka's great fire

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912: This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
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The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
over a year ago
92

Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
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Wuthering...
Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not... A month without writing anything.  Plenty of reading, though. FICTIONS The Autobiography of an...
a year ago
91

Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not knowing what they are meaning.

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A month without writing anything.  Plenty of reading, though. FICTIONS The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James Weldon Johnson The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read over the course of months.  The quotation up above is from p. 783.  I will write about...
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The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
a year ago
91

The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
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The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being "You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky...
a year ago
91

What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light."
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This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
a year ago
91

39 Books: 2008

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
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The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep "It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
11 months ago
91

What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
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The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
a year ago
91

On Change and Denial

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
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The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
a year ago
90

“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair "To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
over a year ago
90

Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in April 2024 - this irritation passes over into patient completed understanding Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I...
a year ago
90

Books I Read in April 2024 - this irritation passes over into patient completed understanding

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I was saying it is often irritating to listen to the repeating they are doing, always then that one has it as being to love repeating that is the whole history of each one, such a one has it...
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This Space
39 Books: 1999 I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
a year ago
90

39 Books: 1999

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others published around the same time, such as from Quartet Encounters and Carcanet, the latter with a fussy variant on the title: The Book of Disquietude. But this one is the most pleasurable...
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The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
over a year ago
90

The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
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The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
11 months ago
90

Let's read the Terra Ignota series together

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
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The Marginalian
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love "Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
over a year ago
90

Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
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The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism "Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
over a year ago
90

Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
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The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the... “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
a year ago
90

Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the Moon Is Leaving Us

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
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Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
over a year ago
90

Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth.

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night.  The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example. Hippias is...
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The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world? Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
12 months ago
89

Who's qualified to save the world?

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
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This Space
39 Books: 2009 The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't...
a year ago
89

39 Books: 2009

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't already written about and among those few that I feel able to write about. For 2009 there is one outstanding exception: another book about a writer exiled in Paris. Already in this...
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The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and... "Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
over a year ago
89

Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and Seeing the Heart of Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
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The Marginalian
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
over a year ago
89

William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023 If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or...
a year ago
89

Books I Read in June 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written.  It helps that...
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Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
9 months ago
89

Becoming perceptive

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 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.
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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...
10 months ago
89

The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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...
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The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of... To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
a year ago
89

Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of Belonging

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
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The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley The video from our live event.
8 months ago
89

Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
The video from our live event.
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The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our... "Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
over a year ago
89

Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our Most Destructive Emotion

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his might revealing the extent of his degradation."
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Wuthering...
Plato's Republic - justice, fantasy and censorship - We'll ask Homer not to be angry I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with some thoroughness, but I guess I will just...
over a year ago
89

Plato's Republic - justice, fantasy and censorship - We'll ask Homer not to be angry

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with some thoroughness, but I guess I will just pursue one point.  Good enough. I have been separating Socrates from Plato, an imaginative exercise based on circular criteria.  The more Socratic of the Socratic dialogues are...
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Wuthering...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses by turning three sisters who...
a year ago
89

Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we say, bats.]” (Martin, 140).  How sad that we lost the...
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The Marginalian
Love Anyway You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
a year ago
89

Love Anyway

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
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The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
88

Camouflage

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
a year ago
88

Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
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This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
a year ago
88

39 Books: 2019

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
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This Space
39 Books: 2020 It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
a year ago
88

39 Books: 2020

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
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This Space
39 Books: 2014 One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
a year ago
88

39 Books: 2014

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity. This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
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The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
88

Set in Seclusion

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
10 months ago
88

Hint #1

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
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Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes,...
over a year ago
88

Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century, perhaps written when Seneca was in...
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The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post...
a year ago
88

Downstream of Fukushima

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post Downstream of Fukushima appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem? When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
11 months ago
88

Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem?

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
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The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
a year ago
88

“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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."
10 months ago
88

We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
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The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply... "A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
a year ago
87

Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent."
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The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
a year ago
87

Befriending a Blackbird

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
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Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original... La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
a year ago
87

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original without being original

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I have seen outside of Latin American literature.  Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
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The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to... "Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
a year ago
87

On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to Change Your Mind

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
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Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
11 months ago
87

Swimming in July

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and throw it at the sun—the way the water falls apart into drops, and then into mist, the way a rainbow appears for a second and is gone.
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The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
87

Woman in a Red Raincoat

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted... Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
11 months ago
87

Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted lives?"

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H. Lawrence and Ronald Firbank!  I feel I should write about it; I feel I should read...
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This Space
Books of the year 2024 In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s...
6 months ago
87

Books of the year 2024

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
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The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
a year ago
87

The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and Compulsory Coupledom

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them."
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The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd... "Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
a year ago
86

Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd on the Uncomfortable Path to Wholeness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in is."
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Wuthering...
Ovid's Amores and Marlowe's Ovid - Love slack’d my muse Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter...
a year ago
86

Ovid's Amores and Marlowe's Ovid - Love slack’d my muse

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter Green in The Erotic Poems (1982) and Christopher Marlowe as Ovid’s Elegies (1599).  A statement of purpose: I, Ovid, poet of my wantonness, Born at Peligny, to write more address. So...
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This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
86

Kevin Hart and the outside

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
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The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
a year ago
86

I'm traveling the world to study utopia

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
An update about my life and artistic process.
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Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable...
a year ago
86

Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable things, but I have limits.  Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post. Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
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Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
a year ago
86

Thoughts on agency

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
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The American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
86

Sheep Jones

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
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This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
a year ago
85

"A mighty, contagious absence"

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...
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This Space
39 Books: 2000 In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
a year ago
85

39 Books: 2000

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
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This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
a year ago
85

39 Books: 2011

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
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This Space
Twentieth anniversary post On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have...
9 months ago
85

Twentieth anniversary post

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months 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...
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The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing “The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
a year ago
85

Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
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The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
a year ago
85

Tramping With Virginia

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
a year ago
85

Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
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The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation "There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
a year ago
85

On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
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This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
a year ago
84

39 Books: Introducing a blog series

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
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The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist... Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
a year ago
84

Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist Emma Kunz

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
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The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life "We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
a year ago
84

No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
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The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred "Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
over a year ago
84

The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
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Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023 I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long...
over a year ago
84

Books finished in April 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic. If I did not write in April, I at least read: GREEK PHILOSOPHY The...
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The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
84

Laura S. Lewis

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding... "The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
a year ago
84

John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges."
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The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
over a year ago
84

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
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This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
a year ago
84

39 Books: 2001

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
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The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
83

Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
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The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
over a year ago
83

How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
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The American Scholar
“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American...
a year ago
83

“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
a year ago
83

Bubble Girl

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
a year ago
83

The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
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The Elysian
How many hours a week do you (actually) spend on your salary job? I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who...
11 months ago
83

How many hours a week do you (actually) spend on your salary job?

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who work salary jobs work significantly fewer tha…
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The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success “You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
a year ago
83

John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
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The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect "Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
11 months ago
83

The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
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Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will... Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
a year ago
83

Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will I live

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel (2009). ...
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The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
a year ago
83

The Pleasure of Being Left Alone

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
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The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
over a year ago
83

Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential Longing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life."
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The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
11 months ago
83

Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what poems are, or forget."
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This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
a year ago
82

39 Books: 2010

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad." By this time I had given up reviewing...
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The American Scholar
“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The...
a year ago
82

“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
a year ago
82

“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder "The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our...
a year ago
82

Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature."
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The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy "Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
over a year ago
82

The Broadest Portal to Joy

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
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The American Scholar
Changing the Lens Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
a year ago
82

Changing the Lens

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
12 months ago
82

“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure... "We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a...
12 months ago
82

The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure for Conflict

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a biological and a social one. Each of us has had many authors, and each of us is engaged, for better or worse, in that same authorship. We could say that the human race is a great...
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The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
a year ago
81

Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
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The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun "Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
11 months ago
81

Maybe you need to have more fun

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
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The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
over a year ago
80

The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
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The American Scholar
The Scales The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
80

The Scales

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
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This Space
39 Books: 2002 The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
a year ago
80

39 Books: 2002

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5. Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
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The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
over a year ago
80

Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
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This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
a year ago
80

39 Books: 1997

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
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The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
a year ago
80

“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
10 months ago
80

Thinking about perceptiveness

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
links
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This Space
39 Books: 1998 I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
a year ago
80

39 Books: 1998

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
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The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
a year ago
79

Esteban Cabeza de Baca

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
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Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
6 months ago
79

Things I learned working with artists

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
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The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
over a year ago
79

The Life of Trees: A Poem

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
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The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
over a year ago
79

2,000 Years of Kindness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
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This Space
No safe landing A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
8 months ago
79

No safe landing

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months 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...
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This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
a year ago
79

39 Books: 1985

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
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This Space
39 Books: 2013 I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
a year ago
79

39 Books: 2013

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right: Real...
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Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
9 months ago
79

Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
From Giacometti’s sketch book
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in July 2023 How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse. ...
a year ago
79

Books I Read in July 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse.  Posts on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at least hope.  My eventual excuse this month will be, I am afraid, even better. Still, I...
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The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community The one where communes aren't the answer.
a year ago
79

“Friends” as the ideal community

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The one where communes aren't the answer.
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The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
a year ago
78

Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
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The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and... A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
a year ago
78

Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and Illustrated by Artist Nikki McClure

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
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The American Scholar
Hot and Cold The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
78

Hot and Cold

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love "All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
a year ago
78

Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms."
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This Space
39 Books: 2018 In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
a year ago
78

39 Books: 2018

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
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Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
6 months ago
78

On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts: So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”. I...
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This Space
39 Books: 2015 In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
a year ago
78

39 Books: 2015

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
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Wuthering...
it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the... Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without...
over a year ago
78

it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the beginning of the History of Philosophy without Any Gaps

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without Any Gaps.  What can that mean, without any gaps? We’ve finished Aristotle, and it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap.  In an undergraduate philosophy course you...
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The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
over a year ago
78

The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
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The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
over a year ago
78

Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border."
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Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by... The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in...
a year ago
78

Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by reason of its length

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in February.  I gotta catch up on my posts. One big book down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible. TRAVEL, let’s call it Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), Rebecca...
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The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life "We are lichens on a grand scale."
over a year ago
78

Lichens and the Meaning of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"We are lichens on a grand scale."
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The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong "You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
78

Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
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The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
over a year ago
78

O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
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The Marginalian
Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what...
over a year ago
78

Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great."
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The Marginalian
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity "The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
a year ago
77

Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
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The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
over a year ago
77

The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
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Wuthering...
Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the...
over a year ago
77

Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the surviving Roman plays to remind myself what they are like.  Twenty-six comedies and ten tragedies have survived.  I read about half of them long ago and plan to reread fewer than...
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The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
11 months ago
77

Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
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This Space
A rare sort of writer Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've...
over a year ago
77

A rare sort of writer

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've written over the years – after a brief interlude. I read him first in July 1988 after borrowing The Lessons of Modernism from the second floor of Portsmouth Central Library because...
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Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
a year ago
77

On shortcuts and longcuts

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or...
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Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
over a year ago
77

Xenophon's Socrates

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher, independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible.  The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds is not much help.  But luckily we have Xenophon, a close...
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Wuthering...
The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of...
over a year ago
77

The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of Menander and the other Greek New Comedy writers was irrelevant, since all of those texts were soon lost.  Plautus (and his successor Terence) carried the stage traditions, the...
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The Marginalian
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality "We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
over a year ago
77

Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
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Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally...
over a year ago
77

Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post. ...
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The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
11 months ago
77

You’d still work if you didn’t have to

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
But it would feel more like play.
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Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
77

Books I read in November 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
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The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of... "We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
over a year ago
76

An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of Connection

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship."
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The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
over a year ago
76

Let Your Heart Be Broken

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
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The American Scholar
Tunneling to Freedom In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp The post...
a year ago
76

Tunneling to Freedom

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp The post Tunneling to Freedom appeared first on The American Scholar.
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This Space
The end of something Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
76

The end of something

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
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The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
over a year ago
76

The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
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The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
12 months ago
76

Jane Skafte

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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...
10 months ago
76

You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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...
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Wuthering...
Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways? He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world...
over a year ago
76

Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways?

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities.  They say he discovered the seasons of the year, and divided the day into 365 days.  (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, p. 12,...
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The American Scholar
Agent 37 The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
76

Agent 37

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
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ben-mini
Making My SQL Skills Obsolete Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under...
6 months ago
75

Making My SQL Skills Obsolete

from ben-mini [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under ben-mini.github.io will automatically redirect, so no changes are needed on your end. By far, the most useful LLM app I’ve made is the Kibu Schema God: I try not to make my posts too...
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The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots Talking points for our literary salon next week.
a year ago
75

Humanity from the perspective of robots

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
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Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour... The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
75

Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour comes

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help book, one of the founding self-help books.  The Meditations of...
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Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think? + links
8 months ago
75

Without looking it up, what do you think?

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
+ links
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The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State This cooperative could be its own country.
9 months ago
75

Mondragon as the new City-State

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
This cooperative could be its own country.
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The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love "Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
over a year ago
75

How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
over a year ago
75

May Sarton on Grieving a Pet

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
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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."
10 months ago
74

You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
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Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play... I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
74

Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play readalong

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy.  Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do.  If we...
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The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish... On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
over a year ago
74

The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish Productivity and Compulsive Distraction

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness."
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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,...
10 months ago
74

Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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.”...
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The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
a year ago
74

Imperfecta

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
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This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
a year ago
74

39 Books: 2016

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
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The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
over a year ago
74

How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
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The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
74

How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent "A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
over a year ago
74

May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
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This Space
Favourite books 2022 This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable...
over a year ago
74

Favourite books 2022

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable books of the year lists, though I enjoyed those not included in this selection. Jon Fosse – Septology Thomas Bernhard – The Rest is Slander "we are concealing a secret, a secret...
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The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe … How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It...
a year ago
73

Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe …

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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...
10 months ago
73

How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
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The American Scholar
Chris Combs Surveillance state The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
73

Chris Combs

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Surveillance state The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial... An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
over a year ago
73

God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
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The Elysian
Hint #2 I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
10 months ago
73

Hint #2

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
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Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023 Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
73

Books I Read in September 2023

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks.  A medical deadline approaches.  That will help. As usual, I read good books.   PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
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The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
over a year ago
73

Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
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The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old "Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
over a year ago
73

How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
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This Space
"When now?" Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
73

"When now?"

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
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Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
6 months ago
73

A summary of what I wrote in 2024

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
A man sets out to draw the world.
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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...
9 months ago
72

A Poet of the Soil

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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...
8 months ago
72

Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really do it. November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza.  I will be joining her by reading at least the first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
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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...
9 months ago
72

How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months 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...
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The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
72

“The Pulley” by George Herbert

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
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This Space
The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there...
over a year ago
72

The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there after millennia in darkness, and Notebooks, suggesting a private endeavour, preparation, a work to come. While neither is secret as such, neither was meant for the light. Two intrigues...
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This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
72

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
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The Marginalian
A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts,... "The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be...
over a year ago
72

A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts, the Psychology of Hopelessness, and the Path to Wholeness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that...
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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...
9 months ago
72

The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 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...
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
over a year ago
72

May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
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Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
9 months ago
72

Writing while walking

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
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The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
71

“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
71

Love and the Sacred

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
10 months ago
71

Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
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The Marginalian
Wherever You Are, Stop What You’re Doing Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater,...
5 months ago
71

Wherever You Are, Stop What You’re Doing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater, to glorify” — more than the act of noticing its details, and nothing sanctifies it more: Kneeling to look at a lichen is a devotional act. We bless our own lives by recognizing and...
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The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder...
12 months ago
71

Turning the World to Powder

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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.
10 months ago
71

Pseudonyms lets you practice agency

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
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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. ...
10 months ago
71

Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't know

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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,...
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This Space
At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday...
over a year ago
71

At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen

from This Space [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday speech, a word or two is usually added to supplement the weedy noun: people say “At this moment in time”, which is when I ask: can a moment be in anything else; a moment in lampposts...
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Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
a year ago
71

In praise of insular groups

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
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Wuthering...
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of...
over a year ago
71

Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete plays.  The last surviving tragedy, even if it hardly recognizable as a tragedy, it provides a coherent ending to the tragic tradition.  It is...
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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...
9 months ago
71

How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months 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...
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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."
9 months ago
71

The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
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The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
a year ago
71

War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote to Media Manipulation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being."
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The American Scholar
The Diagnostician of Despair Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of...
6 months ago
71

The Diagnostician of Despair

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me? Letters to an anarchist, part one.
7 months ago
70

Will you explain anarchism to me?

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
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Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
over a year ago
70

The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus.  The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons.  Plautus was...
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The Elysian
Hint #3 I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
10 months ago
70

Hint #3

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
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The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and... In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
70

Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and Flowers

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
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Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
over a year ago
70

Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise.  “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
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Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. ...
over a year ago
70

Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. 1. Roman plays.  Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
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The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post...
10 months ago
70

Nights at the Opera

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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.
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The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
12 months ago
69

Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
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The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
over a year ago
69

Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30 Years Before ChatGPT

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
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The American Scholar
Rage, Muse The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
10 months ago
69

Rage, Muse

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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.
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The Marginalian
Forgiveness Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare,...
5 months ago
69

Forgiveness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a resolution to write more poetry in the coming year, so we began taking turns each week choosing a line...
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The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
69

Teach the Conflicts

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
10 months ago
69

“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
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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."
9 months ago
69

From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
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The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
11 months ago
69

Your visions for the next Renaissance

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
From our May writing prompt.
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The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions "This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
over a year ago
69

Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
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The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
69

The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"What is happiness but growth in peace."
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The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
11 months ago
69

An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
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Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected generosity is potency
8 months ago
68

On feeling connected

from Escaping Flatland [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
generosity is potency
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Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
68

Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes.  Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted. The conceit is as usual excellent.  Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
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The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
68

A Ray of Sunshine

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering "Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
a year ago
68

The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
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The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the... Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
a year ago
68

The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the Moon to Unify the World’s First Empire

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
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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...
10 months ago
68

“I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Elysian
One essay could change the future Please support a better media ecosystem.
8 months ago
68

One essay could change the future

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
Please support a better media ecosystem.
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Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Sanding UI One of the ways I like to do development is to build something, click around a ton, make tweaks,...
9 months ago
68

Sanding UI

from Jim Nielsen’s Blog [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
One of the ways I like to do development is to build something, click around a ton, make tweaks, click around more, more tweaks, more clicks, etc., until I finally consider it done. The clicking around a ton is the important part. If it’s a page transition, that means going back...
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The American Scholar
“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The...
11 months ago
68

“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
a year ago
68

Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
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The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful... On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
a year ago
67

The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful Flower Pigment Prints via a Victorian Imaging Process

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
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The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now? And how do we build it?
7 months ago
67

Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now?

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
And how do we build it?
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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...
10 months ago
67

Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 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."
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The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government Ok but what can we do about it?
6 months ago
67

The rich are controlling our government

from The Elysian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Ok but what can we do about it?
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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...
9 months ago
67

Queen of the Night

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 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.
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The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
over a year ago
67

Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
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The American Scholar
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother” Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on...
11 months ago
67

“The Last Words of My English Grandmother”

from The American Scholar [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
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The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace "Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
a year ago
66

Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
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Wuthering...
Read and To Read, in 2024 and 2025 What did I read in 2024? The best book I read last year was Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE).  Best...
5 months ago
66

Read and To Read, in 2024 and 2025

from Wuthering Expectations [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
What did I read in 2024? The best book I read last year was Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE).  Best books, really, in translations by Arthur Golding and Charles Martin.  My “best book of the year” answer will never be interesting.  America’s librarian Nancy Pearl asked, somewhere on...
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