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Escaping Flatland
Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself and bloom When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound...
a week ago
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a week ago
When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound prudish and monk-like. But we shouldn’t forget how interesting and overpoweringly pleasurable sustained attention can be.
The American Scholar
The Art of Doing Politics Sarah Stein Lubrano on prioritizing relationships over rationality The post The Art of...
4 weeks ago
41
4 weeks ago
Sarah Stein Lubrano on prioritizing relationships over rationality The post The Art of <em>Doing</em> Politics appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Aesthetics My Primary Value' The Louisiana poet Gail White published three poems in Peacock Journal, all freighted with...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
The Louisiana poet Gail White published three poems in Peacock Journal, all freighted with serious thought and all skirting the charms of light verse. White avoids the failings of pretentiousness and mere silliness. Consider “Resemblances”:  “Somewhere along the primrose...
Escaping Flatland
If you're facing a complicated decision, your first job isn't to find a solution, but to understand... Some housekeeping:
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Talked About Philip Larkin' Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He loved garage sales and thrift shops and had no shame about looking for second-hand bargains. He liked the English expression “jumble sale.” Ken wasn’t cheap but never seemed to have enough...
The American Scholar
“The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan appeared...
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” by Natan Yonatan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'What May Save Us Is Conversation' A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation....
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation. All work or worked in the past for the same government agency in Washington, D.C. Conversation tended toward the traditionally male – politics, sports, health. Inevitably, opinions...
The Marginalian
Rewilding the Human Spirit in the Age of Moral Colonialism: Brian Eno on Carnival as a Model for... The prisons we choose to live inside hardly ever look like prisons while we are living in them. If...
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
The prisons we choose to live inside hardly ever look like prisons while we are living in them. If the twentieth century was the age of dictatorships — I grew up in one — reducing human beings to a herd, the twenty-first century, with its self-appointed moral despots, is the age...
The Elysian
How I crowdfunded a $60,000+ book advance Plus, my plans for the book from here.
4 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
Collaborative writing A common phenomenon in the history of literature is couples writing together.
2 weeks ago
This Space
Reading, forgetting In an in-between time in which nothing begins or ends, in which blank patience takes the place of...
2 weeks ago
20
2 weeks ago
In an in-between time in which nothing begins or ends, in which blank patience takes the place of activity, I picked two books from my shelves stubbornly remote from utility, lacking the intimacy of possession, and a third in which I had never read a key section. The first was...
The Elysian
Marginalia: How to run the world, the case against elections, unions championing WFH Notes from the margins of my research.
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Shun the Man of Sorrow' Part of me resists the notion of books as medicine, as one-dose cures for life’s pains and...
4 weeks ago
20
4 weeks ago
Part of me resists the notion of books as medicine, as one-dose cures for life’s pains and disappointments. Too often, volumes touted for their therapeutic qualities are accompanied by nasty side effects: lousy writing, including clichés and soft-headed reasoning. Such books risk...
The Elysian
My master plan to create a modern media empire A network of media organizations that support readers, not advertisers.
3 weeks ago
Wuthering...
a fantastic universe where the presence of man was not foreseen - Maurice Herzog's Annapurna: First... Books that generate other books, books that are first in the line, interest me.  Despite...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Books that generate other books, books that are first in the line, interest me.  Despite little interest in mountaineering, I read Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak (1951, tr. Nea Morin and Janet Adam Smith) by Maurice Herzog, the subject of the book well summarized...
The American Scholar
The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in...
3 weeks ago
17
3 weeks ago
Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in America The post The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Dawn: A Watercolor Ode to the Primeval Conversation Between Our Living Planet and Its Dying Star “You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the...
4 weeks ago
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4 weeks ago
“You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the present,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his transcendent portrait of the transition from sleep to wakefulness. The experience of waking — that phase transition between the liquid...
The Elysian
Office Hours An experimental salon.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful Predator Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whales, they are the largest member of the dolphin family. Older than great white sharks, they hunt...
The Marginalian
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements... “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever...
3 weeks ago
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“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we know how to order it to perform,” Ada Lovelace inveighed upon composing the world’s first algorithm for the world’s first computer. Meanwhile, she was reckoning with the nature...
The Elysian
Are we living in heaven or hell? It's a showdown between Elysium and Tartarus.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Undersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World “The book of love is full of music,” sings Peter Gabriel. “In fact, that’s where music comes from.”...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
“The book of love is full of music,” sings Peter Gabriel. “In fact, that’s where music comes from.” The book of love is written in the language of wonder — our best means of loving life more deeply. To love anything — a person, a pond, the world — is to see the wonder in it, to...
Wuthering...
Ralph Roister Doister, among the first regular English comedies - Then to our recorder with... Ralph Roister Doister (written c. 1550, published 1567) once had the distinction of being the first...
a week ago
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Ralph Roister Doister (written c. 1550, published 1567) once had the distinction of being the first comedy in English.  Please see this 1911 edition of the play calling it “the first regular English comedy.”  I do not know what 19th century critics meant by “regular” but this...
The Marginalian
A Heron, a Red Leaf, and a Hole in a Blue Star: Poet Jane Kenyon on the Art of Letting Go The vital force of life is charged by the poles of holding on and letting go. We know that the price...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
The vital force of life is charged by the poles of holding on and letting go. We know that the price of love is loss, and yet we love anyway; that our atoms will one day belong to generations of other living creatures who too will die in turn, and yet we press them hard against...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Discipline Results in Freedom' Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of the Sitwells. I know Dame Edith and her brothers, Sir Osbert and Sir Sacheverell, largely by reputation, and they impress me as an eccentric English phenomenon that has...
The American Scholar
The Seeker and the Sought A prominent Buddhist scholar’s quest to unify East and West The post The Seeker and the Sought...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
A prominent Buddhist scholar’s quest to unify East and West The post The Seeker and the Sought appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seldom Softened By Any Appearance of Gaiety' In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical...
2 weeks ago
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In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical appearance. He could be eloquently brutish and write of Jonathan Swift:  “The person of Swift had not many recommendations. He had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he washed...
The American Scholar
Eighty The post Eighty appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Cici Osias Sewing cultures together The post Cici Osias appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Essayists, Like Poets, Are Born and Not Made' “A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being,...
2 weeks ago
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“A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being, and without it he does well to hold his tongue. Blessed with these attributes he is an essayist to some purpose. Give him leisure and occasion, and his discourse may well become as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passages of Especial Beauty' Quietly, without much critical hemming and hawing, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) has become for...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Quietly, without much critical hemming and hawing, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) has become for this reader a major minor writer. I’m reminded of this by a friend who tells me he’s reading Smith’s autobiography, Unforgotten Years (1938), a title that sneaks up on you in its...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Place Remote and Islanded' “If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
“If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my things are going to last.”  This is Edwin Arlington Robinson at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, writing to a friend on August 20, 1926. In effect he is proposing a fanciful...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Have the Long List of Autodidacts' Robert Penn Warren in Democracy and Poetry (1975):  “The will to change: this is one of the most...
3 weeks ago
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Robert Penn Warren in Democracy and Poetry (1975):  “The will to change: this is one of the most precious heritages of American democracy. We have the story of the young Washington, who studied surveying and could, by the exercise of his skill, buy ‘Bullskin plantation,’ his...
The American Scholar
A New Sweet Diminishment What happens when a 60-year-old writer dons helmet and pads to compete under the Texas lights? The...
a week ago
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a week ago
What happens when a 60-year-old writer dons helmet and pads to compete under the Texas lights? The post A New Sweet Diminishment appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Embodiment and the (Re)invention of Emoji, from the Aztecs to Humboldt and Darwin to AI By the time he published Vues des Cordillères, et monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique,...
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By the time he published Vues des Cordillères, et monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique, Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769–May 6, 1859), barely in his forties, was the world’s most eminent and polymathic naturalist (the word scientist was yet to be coined)....
The American Scholar
The Stolen Lines The post The Stolen Lines appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The American Scholar
The Great American Travel Book The book that helped revive a genre, leading to an all-too-brief heyday The post The Great American...
2 weeks ago
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The book that helped revive a genre, leading to an all-too-brief heyday The post The Great American Travel Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
What Lies Beneath the Levee Camp Holler Eric McHenry investigates a century-old crime preserved in music The post What Lies Beneath the...
2 weeks ago
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Eric McHenry investigates a century-old crime preserved in music The post What Lies Beneath the Levee Camp Holler appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
On Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands...
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“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most spirited letter. “As a man is, so he sees.” Because how we look at the world shapes the world we see, every act of noticing is an act...
The American Scholar
“Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Every country ranked from best to worst A report card for the whole world.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Yield Myself to Tombstones and Oblivion' Today’s AI-driven writing, even when composed by a verifiable human being, has little in common with...
4 weeks ago
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Today’s AI-driven writing, even when composed by a verifiable human being, has little in common with the baroque extravagance of Sir Thomas Browne’s prose. He is a non-utilitarian word-lover’s delight, without writing nonsense. Among writers most often cited by the Oxford English...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Death of Discourse' As a boy I was often told I spoke too loudly. It makes sense, as I came from a family of yellers....
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
As a boy I was often told I spoke too loudly. It makes sense, as I came from a family of yellers. It’s an annoying habit, usually inappropriate, one I associate with self-centeredness. I made a conscious effort to lower the volume, a rare instance of successfully stifling an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Thought of Little Things' Timing is crucial in one’s reading life. Several people have advised readers to take on...
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Timing is crucial in one’s reading life. Several people have advised readers to take on Proust’s masterwork only after their fortieth birthday. I first read it months before my eighteenth in the old C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation. Was much of it lost on me? Of course. I was...
Wuthering...
What I Read in August 2025 - But good ale down your throat hath good easy tumbling I have been learning a lot about Elizabethan literature.  Next month we will see what good it...
a week ago
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I have been learning a lot about Elizabethan literature.  Next month we will see what good it does me.  I am enjoying myself.  The title quotation is from Ralph Roister Doister. I plan to put up a post about Marlowe’s first – probably his first – play, Dido, Quen of Carthage, on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Impossible Not to Be Entertained' “In those days when Bedlam was open to the cruel curiosity of holyday ramblers, I have been a...
2 weeks ago
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“In those days when Bedlam was open to the cruel curiosity of holyday ramblers, I have been a visitor there. Though a boy, I was not altogether insensible of the misery of the poor captives, nor destitute of feeling for them.”  The English poet William Cowper, a veteran of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Good Humoured Growl' We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies and an angry man is never forgiving -- convictions rooted in naïveté about human nature, which is willful and contradictory. Few of us even understand our own motives. Here is...
The American Scholar
Tiny Acts The post Tiny Acts appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
How to run a modern social club A three-year business plan to inspire more thinkers and grow membership.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Praise of Half-Forgotten Books' Sometimes all it takes for me to pull a book off the shelf is a provocative or otherwise...
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Sometimes all it takes for me to pull a book off the shelf is a provocative or otherwise interesting title. While retrieving a collection of William H. Pritchard’s reviews in the university library I noticed a nearby slender volume titled In Praise of the Half-Forgotten and Other...