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The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now? And how do we build it?
3 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
Authenticity as dialogue John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
3 weeks ago
This Space
Books of the year 2024 In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s...
a week ago
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a week 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
The rich are controlling our government Ok but what can we do about it?
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
“how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Blood Knowledge by Kirsty Gunn "A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem"...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem" said Muriel Spark, adding by explanation: "The longer they become, the more they seem to lose value". We might wonder then if the most value is to be found in the shortest novels,...
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
a week ago
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
3 weeks ago
19
3 weeks ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
a week ago
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
a week ago
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a week ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted' A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that makes us...
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative? We're asking the wrong questions.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy "Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
4 weeks ago
17
4 weeks ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
4 weeks ago
17
4 weeks ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown' Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:  “O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,     Student of...
The American Scholar
Overconsumed Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard The post...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard The post Overconsumed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading' A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all these?” I can reply with one of...
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
6 days ago
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6 days 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...
Wuthering...
Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer - an adventure is merely a bit of bad planning One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir covering the polar explorer’s entire career.  It’s a good book, full of adventure. To the explorer, however, adventure is merely an unwelcome interruption of his serious labours. ...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
a week ago
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a week ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays Notes on process
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Express It As Nearly As I Can' Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the...
4 weeks ago
16
4 weeks ago
Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the blogosphere. This would be around 2006, the year I launched Anecdotal Evidence. The proprietor and I exchanged a few emails. He was a reader though his blog was not exclusively devoted...
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...
5 days ago
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5 days 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No' The professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
4 weeks ago
15
4 weeks ago
The professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
The Elysian
The "letters to an anarchist" post-mortem Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Although Too Many Readers Have Forgotten' My education continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards, 1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
My education continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards, 1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, previously unknown to me:  “All night I sat beside the bed And watched that senseless moaning head Backwards and forwards toss and toss, When suddenly he sat upright And...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Tomorrow I Propose to Regulate My Room' A reader in Columbus, Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December...
a week ago
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a week ago
A reader in Columbus, Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December 21, 1968 issue of The New Yorker he found the poem “Is There a Dr. Johnson in the House.” It’s a typical irregularly lined, jokily rhymed production by Nash that begins:  “Do you...
The American Scholar
“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The...
a week ago
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a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun Tenderness and grit The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
a week ago
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a week ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
The American Scholar
Ups and Downs The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store' Irving Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
Irving Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Settle Down' A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine...
a week ago
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a week ago
A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453 (1971), one he finds “especially amusing”:  “Cosmas [Indicopleustes] tells us of monks who, ignoring their vows, live unchastely, engage in trade and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nor, Quitted Once, Can It Be Quite Recalled' I think we have fetishized age thirteen. It’s linguistic: the first -teen, as though that were some...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
I think we have fetishized age thirteen. It’s linguistic: the first -teen, as though that were some rite of passage. I remember awaiting that age with trepidation, uncertain what was expected of me. I knew contemporaries who were already shaving and one who was pregnant. (Where...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about... The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,... Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read,...
a week ago
13
a week ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by Charlotte Lennox.  I had not read it, so I trailed along. An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her brain addled by novels: From...
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path” Three new prompts The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity The post Kinship and...
a week ago
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a week ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Milestone, Insignificant' Understandably, readers and critics like to take credit for rediscovering forgotten writers...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Understandably, readers and critics like to take credit for rediscovering forgotten writers and resuscitating their reputations. Imagine being the guy who, in 1909, read Moby-Dick (1851; out of print, 1887) and declared Melville (d. 1891) a genius a decade before Van Doren,...
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a week ago
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a week ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
Wuthering...
The books I read in November 2024 - like a hideous spinster who has learned the grim humor of the... Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower...
a week ago
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a week ago
Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower Club (c. 1760), Cao Xueqin – written up long ago. Cartucho (1931) & My Mother's Hands (1938), Nellie Campobello – Brutal vignettes of the Mexican revolution by a diehard partisan, a...
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024 ...
a week ago
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night. At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
2 days ago
12
2 days ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791).  First, David Hawkes, the original translator of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job.  Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin, dies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Friends They May Become To-morrow' “New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in...
3 weeks ago
12
3 weeks ago
“New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath' I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved,...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened, carapaced,” to...
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Claude Fights Back ...
5 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief' With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
a week ago
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a week ago
With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Just to Sweeten the Cup' “It is to be remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The March of Literature (1939), “that a passage...
a week ago
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a week ago
“It is to be remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The March of Literature (1939), “that a passage of good prose is a work of art absolute in itself and with no more dependence on its contents than is a fugue of Bach, a minuet of Mozart, or the writing for piano of...
The American Scholar
“Guests” by Celia Thaxter  Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter  appeared first on The American...
a week ago
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
a week ago
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a week ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
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 days ago
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2 days 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
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious' I hadn’t opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
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a week ago
I hadn’t opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time. It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone, someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 360.5 ...
5 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent' I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 360 ...
a week ago
The American Scholar
Under a Spell Everlasting Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war The post Under a Spell Everlasting appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
Free speech in the age of social media A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create...
a week ago
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a week ago
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create something better.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Grand Marxist Stalin Did Ten In' In one of the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990,...
a week ago
10
a week ago
In one of the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990, 2008), Robert Conquest (1917-2015) writes matter-of-factly: “We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12 December 1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3,167 death...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry' It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
a week ago
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a week ago
It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or naively unprofessional, a mask worn to conceal the shark within, especially among literary types. Of course, critics are born to be severe, nobody’s pal. How many critics can you name whose...
The Elysian
Elysian gatherings around the world Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
6 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked' One way to classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are specialists....
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
One way to classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself' The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the...
6 days ago
8
6 days ago
The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at something he says out of pity and an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm' Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned the book but not the cash. It...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison ...
a week ago
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction ...
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Caught the Christmas Beetle' I understand why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
I understand why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow in nostalgia can prove deadly. But the language in Clive James’ twelve stanzas cataloging an Australian childhood is exotic enough to interest this American reader, apart from their poetic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More' I’ve just learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is always...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
I’ve just learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality "Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
2 days ago
The American Scholar
Such as It Is The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
The American Scholar
Double Exposure On our first memories The post Double Exposure appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
3 weeks ago
7
3 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.' “The Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is published in the...
6 days ago
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6 days ago
“The Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is published in the January 2025 issue of The New Criterion.: “Rickard often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines' When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took...
5 days ago
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5 days ago
When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray...
The Elysian
Am I a Democrat or a Republican? The case for going label-less.
4 days ago
Astral Codex Ten
Take The 2025 ACX Survey ...
4 days ago
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
3 weeks ago
7
3 weeks ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection' “This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of...
a week ago
6
a week ago
“This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay but never completely still.”  In their moral and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time ...
a week ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 359.5 ...
a week ago
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 358 ...
3 weeks ago
Ben Borgers
FileCopy
3 weeks ago
sbensu
On becoming a person (book) It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
3 weeks ago
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
The Diagnostician of Despair Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of...
5 days ago
6
5 days ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas... Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
4 days ago
6
4 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
The American Scholar
Divided Providence Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Aging Out Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy...
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All In search of awe The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
The Writer in the Family The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary...
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero The post The Writer in the Family appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
All Talk Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
6
3 weeks ago
Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Never Relied on His Sensibility Alone' In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the three-volume Hours in a Library (1874-7) and father of Virginia Woolf. For a century England had specialized in producing formidably well-read, non-academic literary critics. In addition...
Astral Codex Ten
Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste ...
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5 ...
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
3 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 357 ...
4 weeks ago
sbensu
The person behind the idea When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Why Not Get Out of This Rut?' "Books offer what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal Christmas-present...
4 days ago
6
4 days ago
"Books offer what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal Christmas-present problem.”  Well, yes and no. I’m a graceless gift giver and receiver, especially when it comes to books. People like my middle son are inspired and have a knack for...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In...
3 weeks ago
5
3 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Island Royalty A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary The post Island Royalty appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
5
3 weeks ago
A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary The post Island Royalty appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Creator’s Code Are humans alone in their ability to make art? The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
5
3 weeks ago
Are humans alone in their ability to make art? The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Still to Suruiue in My Immortall Song' Many of the best things in life, so long as they persist, are accompanied by a shadow of...
19 hours ago
5
19 hours ago
Many of the best things in life, so long as they persist, are accompanied by a shadow of their disappearance. If fortunate, we learn this lesson early. Their transitoriness becomes part of their charm, whether a cat, a garden or a brother. We are grateful and enjoy them...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 361 ...
18 hours ago
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
393
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 Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year 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
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
79
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."
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
78
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."
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:...
6 months ago
77
6 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 American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
7 months ago
76
7 months ago
A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
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
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...
6 months ago
73
6 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...
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
73
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
6 months ago
72
6 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...
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...
6 months ago
71
6 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...
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...
7 months ago
71
7 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...
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...)
7 months ago
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...
6 months ago
69
6 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...
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...
6 months ago
69
6 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad' An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
6 months ago
67
6 months ago
An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”   Now there’s a metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
6 months ago
66
6 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...
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
66
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daft in a Socially Useful and Quite Pleasant Way' A young man and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to discourage...
6 months ago
66
6 months ago
A young man and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to discourage them. Nor do I want to encourage costly foolishness. He’s twenty-one, my age when I indulged in a similar fantasy half a century ago. With a poet and his wife – hardly the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Such a Touchy, Testy, Pleasant Fellow' One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the...
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the past, and sometimes last week. Years ago I wrecked a friendship with a glib remark, a wisecrack that I didn’t even believe but had convinced myself was funny (it was, in fact, but...
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence "We make our lives by what we love."
7 months ago
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...
5 months ago
65
5 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: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
65
7 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 American Scholar
Bitten The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 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...
9 months ago
65
9 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 –...
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
65
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
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."
12 months ago
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...
6 months ago
64
6 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer' I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick. I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim 1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
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...
7 months ago
64
7 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
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...
7 months ago
64
7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Judgment Day of Man’s Illusions' In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book published in the preceding twenty-five years they believed to have been “the most undeservedly neglected.” For this reader, sorry to say, most of them remain neglected. I don’t even...
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 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...
6 months ago
63
6 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
63
7 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 Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world? Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
5 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...
6 months ago
63
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
63
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
8 months ago
63
8 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
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...
8 months ago
63
8 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True' In the final year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
63
a year ago
In the final year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much of...
The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction And publishing.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province' After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already occupied by...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
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...
7 months ago
63
7 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."
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
5 months ago
The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
5 months 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...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History' I read Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer when it was published in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer when it was published in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
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...
6 months ago
62
6 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 Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
62
6 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."
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...
8 months ago
62
8 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...
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 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...
6 months ago
61
6 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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
61
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights' April is the kindest and cruelest month.  Think of the births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
61
8 months ago
April is the kindest and cruelest month.  Think of the births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
61
6 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 American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
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,...
8 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
61
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)."
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...
7 months ago
60
7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay' “A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says,...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
“A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre to which no reader under sixty...
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
7 months ago
60
7 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.
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning? new essay in Asterisk
3 months ago
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...
11 months ago
60
11 months 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
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
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post...
6 months ago
60
6 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Vacuum with American Light' Edward Hopper is often a favorite painter of literary-minded people because, I suspect, so many of...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
Edward Hopper is often a favorite painter of literary-minded people because, I suspect, so many of his works suggest in-media-res excerpts from larger narratives. Looking as his paintings is like opening a novel to a memorable scene, without access to backstory or subsequent...
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...
7 months ago
60
7 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,...
This Space
39 Books: 1999 I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
7 months ago
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7 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
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."
6 months ago
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...
7 months ago
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7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude' Most of Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was written and...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Most of Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
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 Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
5 months ago
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
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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...
This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
7 months ago
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7 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
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...
5 months ago
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5 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."
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...
6 months ago
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6 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
6 months ago
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6 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘A Pocket Universe’ We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,”...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,” a 1969 poem by James Hayford (Star in the Shed Window: Collected Poems 1933-1988, New England Press, 1989): “May the next book you read Be what you need— “A pocket...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Relief, Joy, or Nostalgia' “Of course, no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a specific...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
“Of course, no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a specific time in one’s life, and the particular book’s smell, typeface, and paper can be as much a part of the experience as one’s physical and emotional circumstances.”  I used to think...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process The context is smarter than you.
4 months ago
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...
5 months ago
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5 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Midst the Pomp and Toil of War' I learned that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never read...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
I learned that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never read poetry. I was a senior in high school. Days before we went to see the Oscar-winning film Patton, he delivered a lecture on the general’s military prowess, anti-Semitism and desire to...
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...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
7 months ago
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7 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
The end of literature, part five "Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
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5 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 Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
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
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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 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
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Intense Enthusiasm for Good Literature' I was reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He was, of all...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
I was reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He was, of all the people I ever met, the one who had the most intense enthusiasm for good literature.” Spoken by another, this might amount to glibly rendered bullshit, the sort of thing junior...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Center of Our Mediterranean Civilization' My youngest son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a university...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
My youngest son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a university study program. He’ll be a senior in the fall. I first visited Paris (and Europe) in 1973, age twenty, and stayed in a hotel on the Rue de Maubeuge, 10th arrondissement. Headlines in...
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...
6 months ago
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6 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....
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...
6 months ago
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6 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2014 One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
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7 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...
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
9 months ago
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9 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?...
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
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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
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...
4 months ago
58
4 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...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium' In 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar and...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
In 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar and translator Clarence Brown published The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
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...
7 months ago
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7 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...
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...
8 months ago
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8 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Thing Always to Be Guarded Against' “Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history,...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
“Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Artist Knows He Is Ready' A young reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write about. It sounds...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
A young reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write about. It sounds as though he seizes up when he sits down at the keyboard. To call his condition “writer’s block” would be premature. He’s too inexperienced for that to be happening already. The...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
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
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...
8 months ago
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8 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: 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...
8 months ago
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8 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
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...
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Changing the Lens Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens 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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive' I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my mother (McCall’s,...
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...
7 months ago
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7 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 Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Also Read for Ecstasy' A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her questions aren’t cynical. She sounds like a reader driven by the sort of bookish hunger I recognize. Her tastes are eclectic, not confined strictly to the American or...
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...
9 months ago
56
9 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn’d to Dance' Alexander Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:  “At length, my Friend (while Time, with...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Alexander Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:  “At length, my Friend (while Time, with still career, Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth year), Sees his past days safe out of Fortune’s power, Nor dreads approaching Fate’s uncertain hour; Reviews his life, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Sky Seems to Turn Into Rain' The storm was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne river. The tops...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
The storm was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne river. The tops of newly planted trees touched the ground. Yard and street filled with branches, leaves and pine cones. A block away, an oak cracked and fell, blocking the street. We lost power at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck' As a non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math itself....
7 months ago
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7 months ago
As a non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic. Because of my job I’ve learned...
The American Scholar
“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
3 months ago
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...
5 months ago
56
5 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...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
5 months ago
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
56
6 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...
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
6 months ago
56
6 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave' In observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I had never read...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
In observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:  “The brave respect the brave. The brave Respect the dead; but you -- you...
This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
56
7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Troublesome Error, a Pernicious Foppery'' Let’s be grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant words...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Let’s be grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant words as cant and foppery, so as to avoid the more precise but less polite bullshit. For foppery, the OED offers among its definitions “foolishness, imbecility, stupidity, folly.” It’s...
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
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
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...
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life "We are lichens on a grand scale."
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...
5 months ago
55
5 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.
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...
7 months ago
55
7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Grief and Lost Belief' In the U.S., Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27....
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
In the U.S., Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27. Formerly called Decoration Day, it started after the Civil War as commemoration of the nation’s war dead. The meaning and observance of holidays tend to dilute with time. When I was a boy, the...
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
55
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Things That Pass' Among the books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
Among the books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of The American Scholar, which I bought for a quarter. Joseph Epstein was still the editor. On Page 97 is a poem, “Old Man Sitting in a Shopping Mall,” by a writer whose name was...
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...
9 months ago
55
9 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). ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality' This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists' I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago enters...
5 months ago
55
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get a craving for spaghetti...
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
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
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
55
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."
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...
9 months ago
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert' Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
54
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
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7 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...
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...
10 months ago
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10 months 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
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....
10 months ago
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10 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...
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
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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."
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
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
54
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance' As expected, Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Sustained...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
As expected, Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street, top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise' John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):  “Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others, But I am unable. My inner eye...
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...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
54
7 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 American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
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7 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It All But Lovely As Silence Is' Thanks to S.J. Perelman and his 1952 collection The Ill-Tempered Clavichord, I get confused with...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Thanks to S.J. Perelman and his 1952 collection The Ill-Tempered Clavichord, I get confused with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1722) and with that bone that runs from the sternum to the shoulder blade. You know, the clavicle. Each time I need to cite one of the three, in writing...
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...
7 months ago
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7 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 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 American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months 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...
6 months ago
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6 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’ “Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.” —Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
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...
7 months ago
54
7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The First to Climb a Mountain Because It Is There' On this date in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch), his...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
On this date in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch), his brother Gherardo and two servants climbed to the 6,263-foot summit of Mount Ventoux in Provence. Morris Bishop, Vladimir Nabokov’s closest friend at Cornell, writes in Petrarch and...
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...
9 months ago
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9 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...
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
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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
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d' I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He wanted to play golf and go...
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
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6 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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books' This I find in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
This I find in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker and novelist:  “Throughout his long life Unamuno returned to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle' It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov on May 6, 1923:  “No, life is no quivering quandary! Here under the moon things are bright and dewy. We are...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
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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...
10 months ago
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."
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
The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics' “Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
“Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”  This elegantly crafted question, at...
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Scales The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 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...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are All Potential Recruits for Anarchy' It’s an honor to be published in The New Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
It’s an honor to be published in The New Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years after it was founded by the late Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman. To share pages in the June issue with Gary Saul Morson, Victor Davis Hanson and other gifted writers is...
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
53
7 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
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...
7 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
7 months ago
53
7 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...
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...
9 months ago
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9 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,...
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...
10 months ago
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10 months 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 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
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Now I Am As Lilliputian As All the Rest' “My mood is like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work, just...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
“My mood is like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work, just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live another forty years and spend the whole...
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...
5 months ago
52
5 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 Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots Talking points for our literary salon next week.
7 months 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
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...
4 months ago
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4 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
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
52
8 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 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...
9 months ago
52
9 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags' A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me...
9 months ago
52
9 months ago
A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m happy for you. But if you tell me...
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...
5 months ago
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5 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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind' On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’ bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need' One of R.L. Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a cupboard, most...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
One of R.L. Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
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...
7 months ago
52
7 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 American Scholar
Agent 37 The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community The one where communes aren't the answer.
7 months 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,...
5 months ago
51
5 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 Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun "Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let One Book Lead Him to Another' I have not run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf life and...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
I have not run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf life and largest number of citations is “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan,” published in The American Scholar in 1983 and collected four years later in Once More Around the Block. A...
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
51
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...
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
51
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. ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Pure Absence, No Place, Nowhere, Not' I remember in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
I remember in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of the book is the account of Lenin’s autopsy, following his death at age fifty-two from atherosclerosis. When tapped with tweezers, his cerebral arteries pinged like stone. They...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daring to His Own Disadvantage' “The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
“The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against mock society, mock poetry, mock justice, mock spirituality—against  any form of enslavement—is a benefit.”  Marianne Moore could be a soft touch when it came to reviewing. She could...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 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."
6 months ago
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'When Young Men Go to Die' Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I was a kid and often fired my brother’s pellet gun. My experience with firearms is entirely second- or third-hand via the movies, which give me the illusion that I know...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More' “[H]e gave us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man for what he...
a year ago
51
a year ago
“[H]e gave us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”  A timely, guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece each time he goes to work. Good...
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
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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...
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
51
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...
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
3 months ago
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...
5 months ago
51
5 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader' “. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it,...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
“. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call it—by which a man rises to understand...
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...
a year ago
51
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 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
51
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."
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
51
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 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...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Maintaining a Stable and Orderly Civilization' On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves and reorganized the volumes, one of our cats leaped into an open cupboard in the kitchen. One of the four pegs supporting the middle shelf was missing and Trane’s weight tipped it enough so a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense' “Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
“Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I am always hesitant to make them...
Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
7 months ago
50
7 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds' A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on...
7 months ago
50
7 months ago
A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker moments I wish I could.” Never a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change' Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . . When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
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."
4 months ago
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
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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 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
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
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
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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."
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
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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...
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...
6 months ago
50
6 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
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days' The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form,...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
50
3 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.
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...
a year ago
50
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...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year 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...
7 months ago
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7 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....
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...
a year ago
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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...
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
50
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
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
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
50
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."
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
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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...
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
The American Scholar
Chris Combs Surveillance state The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur' I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
49
a year ago
I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was...
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
49
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style' Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays and reviews...
8 months ago
49
8 months ago
Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
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
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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."
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
4 months 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 Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley The video from our live event.
2 months ago
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
49
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 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 Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
11 months ago
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11 months ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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
49
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
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
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
49
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Valuable Work in Literary Criticism' “Part of the drama of reading Boswell’s Life for the first time is that one can never (however much...
4 months ago
49
4 months ago
“Part of the drama of reading Boswell’s Life for the first time is that one can never (however much classical or Christian erudition one brings to the task) predict confidently how Johnson is going to respond to this or that specific question; yet of course by the end one...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions" “Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
“Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or ‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an occasion for festive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo' A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
49
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers' “Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it...
10 months ago
49
10 months ago
“Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should equal Argus his Eyes . . .”  The first surgery on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
This Space
Favourite books 2022 This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable...
over a year ago
49
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 American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
49
6 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.
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...
7 months ago
49
7 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...
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."
7 months ago
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...
11 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows' Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
48
8 months ago
Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Here the Nothingness Shows Through' I watched an old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day...
8 months ago
48
8 months ago
I watched an old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day and his best man, Stanley, gives him a jigsaw puzzle as a wedding gift. Oliver dismisses it at first as “childish balderdash” and promptly gets hooked putting it together along with,...
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
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 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...
6 months ago
48
6 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.
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...
7 months ago
48
7 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...
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
48
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...
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. ...
a year ago
48
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies' As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s, a month after my eleventh...
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...
5 months ago
48
5 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 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
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
48
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...
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...
7 months ago
48
7 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...
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
47
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 American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago