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Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 366 ...
3 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog What’s odd about you is what’s interesting.
3 weeks ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Tag, you're it Tagged by Scott and Luke and in thoughtful return, I’m answering the Blog Questions Challenge here....
3 weeks ago
18
3 weeks ago
Tagged by Scott and Luke and in thoughtful return, I’m answering the Blog Questions Challenge here. Some of these answers may overlap with the answers I gave Manu for his People & Blogs series, so I’ll do my best to do something a bit different. Please visit Manu’s P&B site...
The American Scholar
Paige Ledom Out of the ordinary The post Paige Ledom appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Wuthering...
Two poisonous Tanizaki novels, Naomi and Quicksand - the same as a fruit that I’d cultivated myself Two Junichiro Tanizaki novels from the 1920s for Japanese Literature Month over at Dolce...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
Two Junichiro Tanizaki novels from the 1920s for Japanese Literature Month over at Dolce Bellezza.  Always interesting to see what people are reading.  Thanks as usual.  18th edition! The two novels I read, Naomi (1924) and Quicksand (1928-30), are closely related.  Both...
The Marginalian
Darwin on How to Evolve Your Imagination The year the young Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809–April 19, 1882) boarded The Beagle, Mary...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
The year the young Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809–April 19, 1882) boarded The Beagle, Mary Shelley contemplated the nature of the imagination in her preface to the most famous edition of Frankenstein, concluding that creativity “does not consist in creating out of void, but...
The Elysian
Deep-research an article with me A six-week workshop for writers.
4 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
ACX Survey Results 2025 ...
3 weeks ago
The Elysian
Metanational corporations are redesigning the world map Parag Khanna on metanational corporations and how they are opening borders, reshaping geopolitics,...
2 weeks ago
13
2 weeks ago
Parag Khanna on metanational corporations and how they are opening borders, reshaping geopolitics, and creating a world of interconnected city-states.
The Marginalian
Your Soul Is a Blue Marble: How to See with an Astronaut’s Eyes When the first hot air balloonists ascended into the skies of the eighteenth century, they saw...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
When the first hot air balloonists ascended into the skies of the eighteenth century, they saw rivers crossing borders and clouds passing peacefully over battlefields. They saw the planet not as a patchwork of plots and kingdoms but as a vast living organism veined with valleys...
The American Scholar
Burned The post Burned appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history The post The Epic Viking Saga of the...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history The post The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Gary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World "What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
"What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands and minds."
The Elysian
Companies are the new City-States That’s why we need to build better ones.
a week ago
Naz Hamid
Simpler Screens Smartphones are a distraction. Numerous studies and research have proven out various scenarios: from...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
Smartphones are a distraction. Numerous studies and research have proven out various scenarios: from students unable to learn as well, to laws prohibiting hands-on device use while driving, and the various apps and platforms that buzz, ping, and are designed to distract. People...
Naz Hamid
Less Precious Social networking is about reach. It started small: your friends first, then grew outwards towards...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
Social networking is about reach. It started small: your friends first, then grew outwards towards acquaintances and your professional life. It grew out to people who might follow you because of some shared interest, and then to complete strangers. Social media likes to tell you...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Love Letter to Words and the Meaning Between Them Growing up immersed in theorems and equations, I took great comfort in the pristine clarity of...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
Growing up immersed in theorems and equations, I took great comfort in the pristine clarity of mathematics, the way numbers, symbols, and figures each mean one thing only, with no room for interpretation — a little unit of truth, unhaunted by the chimera of meaning. I felt like I...
The Marginalian
The Lily vs. the Eagle: D.H. Lawrence on the Key to Balancing Mutuality and Self-Possession in Love If you live long enough and wide enough, you come to see that love is simply the breadth of the...
3 weeks ago
12
3 weeks ago
If you live long enough and wide enough, you come to see that love is simply the breadth of the aperture through which you let in the reality of another and the quality of attention you pay what you see. It is, in this sense, not a phenomenon that happens unto you but a creative...
Wuthering...
Reading The Peony Pavilion with the teens in The Story of the Stone - That garden is a vast and... The teens living in the garden in the YA romantasy The Story of the Stone spend a lot of time...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
The teens living in the garden in the YA romantasy The Story of the Stone spend a lot of time reading forbidden books, much older YA romantasys.  These books are all famous classical Chinese plays.  Cao Xueqin gives a couple of chapters early on to their reading, including a list...
Wuthering...
What I read in January 2025 - You must understand that truth is fiction, and fiction truth. Farewell to The Story of the Stone and a valuable browse in Chinese literature.  I’ll do it again...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
Farewell to The Story of the Stone and a valuable browse in Chinese literature.  I’ll do it again someday. FICTION The Peony Pavilion (1598), Tang Xianzu – written up back here. The Story of the Stone, Vol. 5: The Dreamer Wakes (c. 1760), Cao Xueqin & Gao E – some notes here. ...
Escaping Flatland
Modular life, meaningful work Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 3
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Stubborn Art of Turning Suffering into Strength: Václav Havel’s Extraordinary Letters from... “I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” Oscar Wilde wrote from prison....
2 weeks ago
10
2 weeks ago
“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” Oscar Wilde wrote from prison. “There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.” The cruel kindness of life is that our sturdiest fulcrum of...
The American Scholar
“The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert appeared first on...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
À la recherche de la déconnexion parfaite À la recherche de la déconnexion parfaite Une rétrospective de ma quête de concentration Une...
a week ago
10
a week ago
À la recherche de la déconnexion parfaite Une rétrospective de ma quête de concentration Une première déconnexion À la fin de l’année 2018, épuisé par la promotion de la compagne Ulule de mon livre « Les aventures d’Aristide, le lapin cosmonaute » et prenant conscience de mon...
Josh Thompson
On Hitting Small(er) People this has been hard for me to write, has been sitting in one draft form or another for months....
2 weeks ago
10
2 weeks ago
this has been hard for me to write, has been sitting in one draft form or another for months. Finally getting it off the ‘drafts’ list, but only reluctantly. This is far too long for even me to try to read in a single sitting, especially on my phone, so it might be too long for...
The American Scholar
Kyung Kim Far over the misty mountains The post Kyung Kim appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The Marginalian
Reworldling Humanity: E.B. White’s Magnificent 1943 Response to a Politician Who Wanted to Make the... On September 11, 1943, E.B. White (July 11, 1899–October 1, 1985) reported on the pages of The New...
2 weeks ago
10
2 weeks ago
On September 11, 1943, E.B. White (July 11, 1899–October 1, 1985) reported on the pages of The New Yorker that Clarence Buddhington Kelland — a writer prolific and popular in his lifetime, now forgotten, onetime executive director of the Republican National Committee, described...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 367 ...
2 weeks ago
ben-mini
What’s Preventing Us from Building a Beautiful Product? I just finished listening to Lenny’s conversation with Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear, about what...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
I just finished listening to Lenny’s conversation with Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear, about what it takes to build a great SaaS product. Like many SaaS apps, the Kibu team and I have taken inspiration from Linear. But as we plan our roadmap and implement new solutions, I ask...
Astral Codex Ten
Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative ...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
My Favorite (and all) body modifications In the range of the human experience, there’s a lot of possible body modifications one can purchase...
a week ago
9
a week ago
In the range of the human experience, there’s a lot of possible body modifications one can purchase for oneself. Over the years, I’ve purchased three. LASIK vision correction in ~2016 When I was pretty young, mid-20s, my then-employer placed like a few thousand dollars a year...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 366.666 ...
3 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Living Against Time: Virginia Woolf on Reaping the “Moments of Being” That Make You Who You Are In praise of "the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light."
a week ago
The American Scholar
Just Yesterday The post Just Yesterday appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Model City Monday 2/3/25 Things fall apart
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 368 ...
a week ago
The Marginalian
How to See the Golden Light: Oliver Sacks in Love "The day steeps everything in golden liquid... A sidewalk cafe in the evening, with a wonderful...
a week ago
8
a week ago
"The day steeps everything in golden liquid... A sidewalk cafe in the evening, with a wonderful amber light flooding through the doors and windows: huge, mad stars in an indigo sky. For this, you have to be great, crazy, or wildly in love."
Naz Hamid
Your Site Is a Home Create a home that gives you energy. In meatspace, if you’re fortunate, you likely reside somewhere....
4 days ago
8
4 days ago
Create a home that gives you energy. In meatspace, if you’re fortunate, you likely reside somewhere. How that looks varies from person-to-person. For some, they own. For others, they rent. For those who don’t subscribe to a stationary life, it may be a vehicle, van, or camper. Or...
Astral Codex Ten
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals ...
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
“The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 367.5 ...
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Why Recurring Dream Themes? ...
3 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Ask Me Anything (2/2025) ...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Token of Reverence or Humility' In 1993, I was assigned to write about the opening of a Buddhist “peace pagoda” in Grafton, about...
a week ago
7
a week ago
In 1993, I was assigned to write about the opening of a Buddhist “peace pagoda” in Grafton, about twenty miles east of Albany, N.Y. A photographer accompanied me, a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War and decades of work at the newspaper. We parked and approached the stupa, a...
The Elysian
Expanding your research "Research with me" session two.
a week ago
Astral Codex Ten
Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec ...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Quiet Intent of a Conscious Artist' For the observant – those who revere good prose and other accomplishments of civilization --...
a week ago
7
a week ago
For the observant – those who revere good prose and other accomplishments of civilization -- February 12 is doubly a holy day. In 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Hodgenville, Ky. Across the Atlantic, on the same day, Charles Darwin was born in a Georgian-style...
Ploum.net
Le succès existe-t-il ? Le succès existe-t-il ? La notion de succès d’un blog Un blogueur que j’aime beaucoup, Gee, revient...
4 days ago
7
4 days ago
Le succès existe-t-il ? La notion de succès d’un blog Un blogueur que j’aime beaucoup, Gee, revient sur ses 10 ans de blogging. Cela me fascine de voir l’envers du décor des autres créateurs. Gee pense avoir fait l’erreur de ne pas profiter de la vague d’enthousiasme qu’à connu...
Escaping Flatland
Remember, remember (This might be a distressing read, so let me just say at the start that it ends ok and we are fine...
3 days ago
7
3 days ago
(This might be a distressing read, so let me just say at the start that it ends ok and we are fine now.)
Astral Codex Ten
Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science ...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Is It Beautiful? What Does It Mean?' Erica Light takes after her mother, the late poet Helen Pinkerton, in her thoughtfulness and...
a week ago
7
a week ago
Erica Light takes after her mother, the late poet Helen Pinkerton, in her thoughtfulness and generosity. She has sent me a box of books, including four collections of poems by R.L. Barth: Looking for Peace (1981), Simonides in Vietnam (1990), Small Arms Fire (1994) and Reading...
The American Scholar
“My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand...
a week ago
6
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Such People The post Such People appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The American Scholar
In the Lions’ Studio A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer The post In...
a week ago
6
a week ago
A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer The post In the Lions’ Studio appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Less Inclined to Carp' My nephew and I have long, spontaneous telephone conversations that begin with the usual...
a week ago
6
a week ago
My nephew and I have long, spontaneous telephone conversations that begin with the usual drab pleasantries: “How are you doing?” “Fine. You?” An hour later we’re saying goodbye, but not before Abe tells me he's smitten by P.G. Wodehouse. These talks usually take place Sunday...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul None Dare Forgive' You know what you’re in for just by reading the title and acknowledging the author: “A Love Song in...
a week ago
6
a week ago
You know what you’re in for just by reading the title and acknowledging the author: “A Love Song in the Modern Taste” (1733) by Jonathan Swift. For once, the excremental stuff is absent. The poem amounts to a catalog of clichés about love, a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day card....
Josh Thompson
Quotes from 'Spare the Child' Introduction Here’s quotes from Spare the Child: The Religeous Roots of Punishment and the...
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
Introduction Here’s quotes from Spare the Child: The Religeous Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse, by Philip Greven. It was written in 1989, same year I was born, 35 years ago as of 2025. It’s sometimes nice to be able to share quotes with people....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry Is Sound Before It Is Anything Else' “A word so delicious that one wishes it had cheeks, so as to kiss them.” That’s Jules...
a week ago
6
a week ago
“A word so delicious that one wishes it had cheeks, so as to kiss them.” That’s Jules Renard, writing in his journal in February 1888. Perhaps only a certain sort of writer, one with a musical sense who is susceptible to the pure sound of words divorced from their meaning, can...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pebble Is a Perfect Creature' My nephew has introduced me to the practice of “pebbling,” not to be confused with “stoning.” Sorry...
a week ago
6
a week ago
My nephew has introduced me to the practice of “pebbling,” not to be confused with “stoning.” Sorry to say the psychologists and sociologists got their hands on it first, but there’s nothing new about so simple a human gesture. The word is adopted from the courtship rituals of...
The Elysian
How can the economy work better for us? An interview with Kathryn Anne Edwards.
a week ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 369 ...
6 days ago
The American Scholar
“Faustina, or, Rock Roses” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Faustina, or, Rock Roses” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first...
4 days ago
6
4 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Faustina, or, Rock Roses” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
If you have a social mission, go into business An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative,...
6 days ago
6
6 days ago
An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative, and building social companies.
Ploum.net
De la décadence technologique et des luddites technophiles De la décadence technologique et des luddites technophiles La valeur de texte brut Thierry s’essaie...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
De la décadence technologique et des luddites technophiles La valeur de texte brut Thierry s’essaie à publier son blog sur le réseau Gemini, mais a du mal avec le format minimaliste. Qui est justement pour moi la meilleure partie du protocole Gemini. La low-tech peut-elle...
The American Scholar
Family/History David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story The post Family/History appeared first on The...
a week ago
6
a week ago
David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story The post Family/History appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Still So Much I Do Not Know' I have encountered the neologism “egowriting” used to describe -- with approval -- such genres as...
6 days ago
6
6 days ago
I have encountered the neologism “egowriting” used to describe -- with approval -- such genres as memoirs, diaries, journals, letters, blog posts, commonplace books, notebooks and essays--almost anything. In other words, a broad collection of forms in which the author and his...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 368.5 ...
a week ago
The Marginalian
19-year-old Simone de Beauvoir’s Resolutions for a Life Worth Living We move through the world feeling inevitable, and yet we are the flotsam of otherwise — how many...
5 days ago
6
5 days ago
We move through the world feeling inevitable, and yet we are the flotsam of otherwise — how many other ways the atoms could have fallen between the Big Bang and this body, how many other ways this life could have forked at every littlest choice we ever made. But while chance...
Ploum.net
Et si on arrêtait d’être de bons petits consultants obéissants ? Et si on arrêtait d’être de bons petits consultants obéissants ? Le cauchemar des...
3 weeks ago
5
3 weeks ago
Et si on arrêtait d’être de bons petits consultants obéissants ? Le cauchemar des examens Régulièrement, je me réveille la nuit avec une boule dans le ventre et une bouffée de panique à l’idée que je n’ai pas étudié mon examen à l’université. Cela fait 20 ans que je n’ai plus...
Idle Words
The Shape of a Mars Mission This post is the second in a series. Read part one here. p {line-height:1.6em; } p.caption {...
2 days ago
5
2 days ago
This post is the second in a series. Read part one here. p {line-height:1.6em; } p.caption { margin-top:0px;padding-top:0px;margin-bottom:20px;text-align:center;} a.fnote {text-decoration:none;color:red} img {margin-bottom:0px;} “From a mathematics and trajectory...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A State of Vagary, Doubt and Indecision' There’s a tidy part of me that wants things resolved, whether a lawsuit or a differential equation....
4 days ago
4
4 days ago
There’s a tidy part of me that wants things resolved, whether a lawsuit or a differential equation. No sloppy inconsistencies, no denouements hanging by a thread. I used to love IRS Form 1040EZ: subtract one number from another, sign your name and wait for the refund. I had a...
The Elysian
Going from research to writing Our third "research with me" session.
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Illumination of the Past' Despite the repellant spectacle of Allen Ginsburg, poetry as a career is not a guarantee of fame and...
5 days ago
4
5 days ago
Despite the repellant spectacle of Allen Ginsburg, poetry as a career is not a guarantee of fame and fortune. One of our finest recent poets, Herbert Morris, is forgotten and was hardly remembered even during his life. He published six collections between 1978 and 2000 and died...
Anecdotal Evidence
"This, Books Can Do . . ." At age ten I attended the grand opening of the new public library in Parma Heights, Ohio, within...
3 days ago
4
3 days ago
At age ten I attended the grand opening of the new public library in Parma Heights, Ohio, within easy walking distance of our house. Next door was Yorktown Lanes, the bowling alley dedicated two years earlier. Across the road was the municipal swimming pool where my mother had...
Josh Thompson
Notes on the movie Frozen, which I dislike, and Suzume, which is excellent Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to someone currently best defined as ‘a young child’. I once wrote a lot about my experiences of things, then took a break, and drafted this blog post on a few pages of yellow legal pad,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Can't Quite Recall Your Name' My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for...
3 weeks ago
4
3 weeks ago
My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for the fifty-first at a supper club on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Lake Erie was a hundred yards to the north and when conversation lagged, I could watch the ore boats moving down...
The Marginalian
Edward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die: Immortal Wisdom from the Park Ranger Who Inspired... The summer after graduating high school, knowing he would face conscription into the military as...
3 days ago
4
3 days ago
The summer after graduating high school, knowing he would face conscription into the military as soon as his eighteenth birthday arrived, Edward Abbey (January 29, 1927–March 14, 1989) set out to get to know the land he was being asked to die for. He hitchhiked and hopped freight...
The Elysian
How to be a “good” rich person An interview with David Roberts
2 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Unceasingly Amused According to My Taste' Certain writers inspire profound ambivalence. We admire them for something – often style – and they...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
Certain writers inspire profound ambivalence. We admire them for something – often style – and they let us down by writing something stupid, dull or otherwise offensive. It’s easier dealing strictly with good guys (Chekhov, for instance) and bad guys (like Louis-Ferdinand...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poems Can Be True in Different Ways' Something seems to be stirring out there. I’m too cautious and cynical to proclaim a renaissance in...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
Something seems to be stirring out there. I’m too cautious and cynical to proclaim a renaissance in formalist poetry but the prognosis is promising. Clarence Caddell, an Australian, has published the second issue of The Borough: A Journal of Poetry. I wrote about the first issue...
Astral Codex Ten
Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence ...
3 days ago
Naz Hamid
Goodbye, Instagram Thanks for the memories, but good riddance. I deleted Instagram. Two days ago. The reasons are as...
2 days ago
3
2 days ago
Thanks for the memories, but good riddance. I deleted Instagram. Two days ago. The reasons are as you would expect: doomscrolling, fatigue, vapidness, and of course, all of the horrifying[1] things Meta enables. Concerning Instagram itself, the list is long. The app started...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then, Look Up!' Robert Conquest begins his poem “Nocturne” with a challenge to convention and cliché: “’Broad...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
Robert Conquest begins his poem “Nocturne” with a challenge to convention and cliché: “’Broad Daylight’ – words you speak or write / Imputing narrowness to Night?’” Seven sections follow, including the second:  “Night’s only moonlit, starlit, yet See from that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Lovely Lightness of Spirit' My understanding of “deliquescing” goes back to high-school chemistry: a solid melts or becomes...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
My understanding of “deliquescing” goes back to high-school chemistry: a solid melts or becomes liquid by absorbing moisture from the air. Kay Ryan uses the word in an unexpectedly metaphorical way in her review of This Craft of Verse (2002), a transcript of the lectures Jorge...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Than One Book at a Time?' We have acquired new, smaller bedside tables. More than a third of the surface area is occupied by...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
We have acquired new, smaller bedside tables. More than a third of the surface area is occupied by the alarm clock and a lamp, leaving less space for reading matter. All further accumulation of books and magazines will, of necessity, be vertically arranged, a single stack, which...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely and Permanently Interested in Literature' Another request for a reading list from a young reader. Any reply will be incomplete and...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
Another request for a reading list from a young reader. Any reply will be incomplete and risk discouraging aspiring literati. The only infallible inducement to literature is personal pleasure, a notoriously subjective criterion. I love Gibbon and Doughty, and you may find them...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What My Mind Thinks My Pen Writes' Some books, including several of the best, defy conventional literary formulas and genres. Consider...
4 weeks ago
3
4 weeks ago
Some books, including several of the best, defy conventional literary formulas and genres. Consider Moby-Dick. Is it a novel in the same inarguable sense as Middlemarch, another very big book? What about Tristram Shandy, with its endlessly deferred plot, digressions within...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cure Death With the Rub of a Dock Leaf' The Irish poet Michael Longley died on Wednesday at the age of eighty-five. I’ve read him sparsely...
4 weeks ago
3
4 weeks ago
The Irish poet Michael Longley died on Wednesday at the age of eighty-five. I’ve read him sparsely but recall a devotion to the natural world and to World War I, in which his father fought. Here is “Glossary” (The Candlelight Master, 2020):   “I meet my father in the glossary Who...
The American Scholar
The Bears The post The Bears appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 days ago
Ploum.net
De la soumission au technofascisme religieux De la soumission au technofascisme religieux Les générateurs de code stupide Sur Mastodon, David...
3 days ago
3
3 days ago
De la soumission au technofascisme religieux Les générateurs de code stupide Sur Mastodon, David Chisnall fait le point sur une année d’utilisation de GitHub Copilot pour coder. Et le résultat est clair : si, au début, il a l’impression de gagner du temps en devant moins taper...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Attempt But Little At a Time' A blog turns out to be an education undertaken in public. Its proprietor is more student than...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
A blog turns out to be an education undertaken in public. Its proprietor is more student than teacher, and one is fortunate to encounter numerous tutors along the way, between the covers of books and out there in the bigger world. I seldom sit down at the keyboard with the goal...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 369.5 ...
2 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Poet Is a Noble Creature' “. . . I am under the necessity of appearing as an ancient and more or less venerable figure; others...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
“. . . I am under the necessity of appearing as an ancient and more or less venerable figure; others may come in aeroplanes, but I arrive on a boneshaker; others may give a demonstration with electric stoves, but I freeze over my doleful brazier. Side-whiskers should have been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Must Be Continually Striving to Live' A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or resolutions. No golf and little travel. It’s more likely I’ll continue what I’m already doing – writing, reading, family matters – just more of it. More Montaigne, J.V. Cunningham,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Certain Saving Humor' “Except for a certain saving humor, I should indeed have been a full monster.”  One definition of a...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
“Except for a certain saving humor, I should indeed have been a full monster.”  One definition of a friend is someone with whom you can share any joke or other comic effort without fear of offending him. It may not be funny – the only pertinent criterion for judging humorousness...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Happiness Could Be Impartial for Once' Robert Chandler has rescued, through translation, much of Russian literature for the Anglophone...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
Robert Chandler has rescued, through translation, much of Russian literature for the Anglophone world – Pushkin, Andrey Plantonov, Teffi, Lev Ozerov and Vasily Grossman, among others. Most of Chandler’s own prose I've read has been in the form of brief introductions and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is Not Writing a Poem' Cultural Amnesia (2007) ranks among the most enduringly entertaining books published in this...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
Cultural Amnesia (2007) ranks among the most enduringly entertaining books published in this still-young century. The late Clive James read books like a scholar and wrote about them like an impossibly gifted teenager – that is, with shameless enthusiasm. He was never too cool to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moon at Times Is Hunched and Old' A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met to informally talk about how things were going. Both of us were pleased and knew we had made a good choice. We already liked and trusted each other. Ann paid me an odd compliment...
Astral Codex Ten
Lives Of The Rationalist Saints ...
2 days ago
The American Scholar
“Muse Circe Reclaims Her Lucre” Five new prompts The post “Muse Circe Reclaims Her Lucre” appeared first on The American Scholar.
yesterday
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Belles Lettres Legitimate As Prayer' In the “Prologue” to his 1962 prose collection The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden borrows a conceit...
yesterday
3
yesterday
In the “Prologue” to his 1962 prose collection The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden borrows a conceit from Lewis Carroll and divides all writers – “except the supreme masters who transcend all systems of classification” – into Alices and Mabels. In Alice in Wonderland, the title...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry Is an Art' Most bores are not aware they are boring. It’s not always their fault and the impulse to tell them...
2 days ago
2
2 days ago
Most bores are not aware they are boring. It’s not always their fault and the impulse to tell them they are boring, though understandable, is almost always a waste of time. You can’t make people interesting who value their humorlessness, bad taste and stridency.  I woke the other...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Tegmark's Mathematical Universe ...
15 hours ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Merely the joy of writing' A rare and winning combination: a serious person who seldom takes himself seriously. He keeps his...
8 hours ago
2
8 hours ago
A rare and winning combination: a serious person who seldom takes himself seriously. He keeps his ego a little off to the side, muffled, away from the business at hand. It never disappears. It grows dormant, like some cases of tuberculosis. Jules Renard is such a man and writer,...
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
406
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...
The American Scholar
Ho Ho Horror Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American...
a month ago
143
a month ago
Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year ago
The Perry Bible...
Us The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
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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...
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
The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone "The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
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:...
8 months ago
91
8 months 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...
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
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...
8 months ago
89
8 months 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...
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
9 months ago
87
9 months ago
A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness "Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
87
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."
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...
a year ago
87
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."
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...
8 months ago
86
8 months 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...
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...
8 months ago
86
8 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
85
7 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. ...
This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
8 months ago
85
8 months 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...
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...
8 months ago
84
8 months 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...
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."
a year ago
This Space
Literature likes to hide Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
a year ago
84
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...
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...
9 months ago
83
9 months 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...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning? new essay in Asterisk
5 months ago
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...)
9 months ago
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...
11 months ago
82
11 months 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 –...
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...
8 months ago
80
8 months 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...
The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction And publishing.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Bitten The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
9 months ago
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...
8 months ago
79
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
8 months ago
79
8 months 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
8 months ago
78
8 months 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...
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...
6 months ago
78
6 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...
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
77
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...
The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
7 months ago
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...
9 months ago
77
9 months 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...
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
9 months ago
77
9 months 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.
This Space
39 Books: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
9 months ago
77
9 months 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...
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
5 months ago
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...
8 months ago
77
8 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
9 months ago
76
9 months 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...
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
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...
10 months ago
76
10 months 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...
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
7 months ago
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...
8 months ago
76
8 months 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...
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,...
10 months ago
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...
10 months ago
76
10 months 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...
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...
9 months ago
76
9 months 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...
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
8 months ago
76
8 months 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...
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence "We make our lives by what we love."
9 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process The context is smarter than you.
6 months ago
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
7 months ago
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
8 months ago
75
8 months 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."
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...
9 months ago
74
9 months 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...
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...
9 months ago
74
9 months 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,...
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
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...
7 months ago
74
7 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."
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...
a year ago
74
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...
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...
9 months ago
74
9 months 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."
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
74
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...
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...
9 months ago
74
9 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
74
7 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...
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
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...
a year ago
73
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...
The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world? Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
9 months ago
73
9 months 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...
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."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2014 One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
9 months ago
73
9 months 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...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
5 months ago
73
5 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.
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...
10 months ago
73
10 months 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
9 months ago
72
9 months 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...
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post...
8 months ago
72
8 months 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.
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."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1999 I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
9 months ago
72
9 months 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...
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...
a year ago
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...
9 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
7 months ago
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
8 months ago
72
8 months 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...
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...
8 months ago
72
8 months 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...
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...
8 months ago
72
8 months 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...
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...
9 months ago
72
9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
8 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
9 months ago
71
9 months 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...
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."
a year ago
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...
a year ago
The American Scholar
Cudillero The post Cudillero appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley The video from our live event.
4 months ago
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...
a year ago
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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)."
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
9 months ago
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,...
a year ago
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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...
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
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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...
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...
6 months ago
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6 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...
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
70
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,...
The American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
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...
9 months ago
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9 months 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...
The American Scholar
Changing the Lens Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
70
9 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
11 months ago
70
11 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
70
7 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...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
7 months ago
70
7 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.
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023 I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
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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...
The American Scholar
“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
69
9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
9 months ago
69
9 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
69
7 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…
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...
10 months ago
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...
8 months ago
69
8 months 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...
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...
a year ago
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...
9 months ago
69
9 months 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...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
69
9 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
69
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."
This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
9 months ago
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9 months 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...
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."
8 months ago
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...
8 months ago
68
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
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....
12 months ago
68
12 months 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...
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...
8 months ago
68
8 months 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....
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
9 months ago
68
9 months 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.
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.
a year ago
The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
6 months ago
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;...
a year ago
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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."
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...
11 months ago
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...
9 months ago
The American Scholar
The Scales The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
12 months ago
67
12 months 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?...
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...
10 months ago
67
10 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
67
7 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...
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
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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...
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...
10 months ago
67
10 months 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...
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...
a year ago
67
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."
This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
9 months ago
67
9 months 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...
The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life "We are lichens on a grand scale."
a year ago
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...
8 months ago
67
8 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
67
7 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."
The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun "Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
7 months ago
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
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,...
7 months ago
66
7 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...
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."
a year ago
The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
a year ago
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
66
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...
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."
6 months ago
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
66
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...
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
8 months ago
66
8 months 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."
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...
10 months ago
66
10 months 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...
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...
9 months ago
66
9 months 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...
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
9 months ago
65
9 months 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...
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
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...
7 months ago
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."
a year ago
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,...
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
9 months ago
65
9 months 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...
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...
10 months ago
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...
9 months ago
65
9 months 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...
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...
a year ago
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
65
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...
This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
10 months ago
65
10 months 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...
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
9 months ago
65
9 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
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."
a year ago
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...
9 months ago
64
9 months 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...
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...
11 months ago
64
11 months 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,...
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."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
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...
11 months ago
64
11 months 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). ...
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
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
64
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."
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
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.
a year ago
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
63
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...
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
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Do Not Spare Yourself The only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person — a dangerous desire too often...
a month ago
63
a month 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...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
7 months ago
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...
11 months ago
63
11 months 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...
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...
a year ago
63
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...
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community The one where communes aren't the answer.
9 months ago
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."
8 months ago
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
63
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...
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...
a year ago
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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."
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...
9 months ago
62
9 months 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...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
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...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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......
a year ago
62
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."
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...
11 months ago
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11 months 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...
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...
a year ago
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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."
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
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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...
This Space
Twentieth anniversary post On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have...
5 months ago
62
5 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...
The American Scholar
Agent 37 The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
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...
9 months ago
62
9 months 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...
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
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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...
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots Talking points for our literary salon next week.
9 months ago
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
11 months ago
Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
9 months ago
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9 months 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...
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
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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...
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."
a year ago
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
61
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...
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
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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,...
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...
8 months ago
61
8 months 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.
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."
9 months ago
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.
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
5 months ago
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...
9 months ago
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9 months 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....
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...
7 months ago
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7 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...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs Surveillance state The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent "A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
8 months ago
60
8 months 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.
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
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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...
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...
8 months ago
60
8 months 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.
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...
a year ago
60
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."
The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
a year ago
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.
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
9 months ago
60
9 months 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...
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
60
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."
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State This cooperative could be its own country.
5 months ago
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
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
60
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. ...
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."
a year ago
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
59
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...
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
59
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...
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."
a year ago
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...
a year ago
59
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."
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
59
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...
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
59
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...
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
59
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...
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...
7 months ago
59
7 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.
This Space
Favourite books 2022 This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable...
over a year ago
58
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...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
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...
a year ago
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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...
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...
a year ago
This Space
No safe landing A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
4 months ago
58
4 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...
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
58
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...
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
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...
2 months ago
57
2 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.
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
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...
a year ago
57
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...
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,...
a year ago
57
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."
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...
4 months ago
57
4 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.
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
56
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...
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...
2 months ago
56
2 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...
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.
6 months ago
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,...
6 months ago
56
6 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.”...
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
56
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...
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
5 months ago
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...
a year ago
55
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...
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...
9 months ago
55
9 months 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...
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...
4 months ago
55
4 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...
The Elysian
Hint #2 I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
6 months ago
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...
5 months ago
55
5 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...
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
55
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...
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
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...
5 months ago
54
5 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...
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...
4 months ago
54
4 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...
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...
5 months ago
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."
6 months ago
The Elysian
Hint #3 I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
5 months ago
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...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
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,...
5 months ago
53
5 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...
The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
53
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...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected generosity is potency
4 months ago
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
6 months ago
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post...
6 months ago
53
6 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.
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
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a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living "The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
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...
2 months ago
53
2 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...
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...
7 months ago
53
7 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...
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."
5 months ago
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
53
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...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
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. ...
6 months ago
53
6 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,...
The Marginalian
200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and... There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In...
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...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
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...
8 months ago
52
8 months 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...
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
6 months ago
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me? Letters to an anarchist, part one.
3 months ago
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
2 months ago
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...
6 months ago
52
6 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."
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
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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...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
This Space
A modern heretic Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur. I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
This Space
Books of the year 2024 In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s...
2 months ago
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2 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...
The Elysian
One essay could change the future Please support a better media ecosystem.
4 months ago
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now? And how do we build it?
2 months ago
Wuthering...
The Bacchae by Euripides - O gods, I see the greatest grief there is. Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive Euripides was, he did not write a play quite at the level of Agamemnon or Oedipus the King, at least until his brief exile in Macedon, where he wrote The Bacchae just before his...
The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal "Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
6 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think? + links
4 months ago
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."
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao Acts of devotion The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
5 months ago
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries... "At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
The American Scholar
Cancer The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
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...
7 months ago
51
7 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."
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...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark The post Queen of the Night appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
51
8 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
8 months ago
51
8 months 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...
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...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
51
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...