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Wuthering...
The magician becomes a bureaucrat - what Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of This World is about The Kingdom of This World (1949), Alejo Carpentier, tr. by Pablo Medina (2017). What is this...
6 hours ago
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6 hours ago
The Kingdom of This World (1949), Alejo Carpentier, tr. by Pablo Medina (2017). What is this novel about.  It is about the Haitian Revolution, although not in the sense that it is a substitute for reading The Black Jacobins (1938). It is about – I am looking at the...
The Marginalian
Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success "To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance... To seek joy in the saddest places....
14 hours ago
2
14 hours ago
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance... To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple."
The American Scholar
Why the Bronx Burned Bench Ansfield on a 20th-century triangle trade The post Why the Bronx Burned appeared first on The...
4 hours ago
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4 hours ago
Bench Ansfield on a 20th-century triangle trade The post Why the Bronx Burned appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Integral of Various Dissimilar Parts' Dr. Johnson identifies nine meanings for composition in his Dictionary. The first -- “the act of...
3 hours ago
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3 hours ago
Dr. Johnson identifies nine meanings for composition in his Dictionary. The first -- “the act of forming an integral of various dissimilar parts” – recalls Aristotle’s notion that perceiving similarities among dissimilar things constitutes genius. A basic human drive is to find...
This Space
Reading, forgetting When John Updike read À la recherche du temps perdu after having read Scott-Moncrieff's translation,...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
When John Updike read À la recherche du temps perdu after having read Scott-Moncrieff's translation, he was surprised to find Proust less Proustian, the epithet we associate with flowery prose blossoming over prodigious sentences proliferating clause within clause. While I cannot...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Tell Me About All You Read' I prefer the prose of two excellent poets – John Keats, Marianne Moore – to their poetry. The former...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
I prefer the prose of two excellent poets – John Keats, Marianne Moore – to their poetry. The former is author of the finest letters ever composed in English. Moore’s essays and reviews are teasing, taut, witty and shrewd, worthy of her master, Henry James. This judgment is...
The American Scholar
Puerto Hurraco The post Puerto Hurraco appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 days ago
The Marginalian
Virginia Woolf on Love “I think we moderns lack love,” Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941) diagnosed us in the...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
“I think we moderns lack love,” Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941) diagnosed us in the first year of our deadliest war. The paradox is that when we lack something long enough, we forget what it looks like, what it means, how to recognize it when it comes along. And...
The Elysian
So, America wants a dictator Are we doomed to repeat history—or can we build something better first?
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What in Most Lives Would Be Pure Deficit' “[M]y life has been far less roiled by external events than most lives. The death of those dear to...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
“[M]y life has been far less roiled by external events than most lives. The death of those dear to me I have usually been able to take in stride, although the last dozen years have become heavier and gloomier with such loss and the loss of the familiar, comforting world of which...
The American Scholar
“Dear Possible” by Laura Riding Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Dear Possible” by Laura Riding appeared first on The...
3 days ago
Wuthering...
Gammer Gurton's Needle - it would have made thee beshit thee / For laughter Gammer Gurton loses her needle (solution to the mystery: distracted by her cat she forgets it in her...
4 days ago
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4 days ago
Gammer Gurton loses her needle (solution to the mystery: distracted by her cat she forgets it in her servant Hodge’s pants).  A wandering stranger uses the hubbub to sow chaos for some reason, which gives the play a kind of plot, which for something like this is just a way to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Past Where No One Knows Me' Dana Gioia speaks for me, though he has another sort of reunion in mind:  “This is my past where no...
4 days ago
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4 days ago
Dana Gioia speaks for me, though he has another sort of reunion in mind:  “This is my past where no one knows me. These are my friends whom I can’t name— Here in a field where no one chose me, The faces older, the voices the same.”   Our fifty-fifth high-school reunion was held...
The Marginalian
By Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of... Alpha and Omega, originally published in 1915, is the third title in Marginalian Editions. Below is...
6 days ago
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6 days ago
Alpha and Omega, originally published in 1915, is the third title in Marginalian Editions. Below is my foreword to the new edition, as it appears in on its pages. “Have faith,” someone I loved said to me, holding my face in her hands — the face of a lifelong atheist. And...
The Elysian
How to run a modern social club A three-year business plan to inspire more thinkers and grow membership.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Solemnize the Marriage Contract' My nephew and I spent the morning going through a plastic storage box filled with photos,...
a week ago
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a week ago
My nephew and I spent the morning going through a plastic storage box filled with photos, documents, newspaper clippings and other oddments Abe inherited from my brother after his death last year. What did we find?  My mother’s 1920 birth certificate (“Legitimate?” “Yes”).   The...
The American Scholar
A New Sweet Diminishment What happens when a 60-year-old writer dons helmet and pads to compete under the Texas lights? The...
a week ago
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a week ago
What happens when a 60-year-old writer dons helmet and pads to compete under the Texas lights? The post A New Sweet Diminishment appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
What I Read in August 2025 - But good ale down your throat hath good easy tumbling I have been learning a lot about Elizabethan literature.  Next month we will see what good it...
a week ago
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a week ago
I have been learning a lot about Elizabethan literature.  Next month we will see what good it does me.  I am enjoying myself.  The title quotation is from Ralph Roister Doister. I plan to put up a post about Marlowe’s first – probably his first – play, Dido, Quen of Carthage, on...
The Marginalian
On Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands...
a week ago
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a week ago
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most spirited letter. “As a man is, so he sees.” Because how we look at the world shapes the world we see, every act of noticing is an act...
Escaping Flatland
Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself and bloom When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound...
a week ago
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a week ago
When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound prudish and monk-like. But we shouldn’t forget how interesting and overpoweringly pleasurable sustained attention can be.
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Hopper Light' I knew “Cracker Barrel” as a brand of cheddar cheese my mother sometimes bought when we were kids....
a week ago
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a week ago
I knew “Cracker Barrel” as a brand of cheddar cheese my mother sometimes bought when we were kids. The recent brouhaha over “branding” informed me it’s also the name of a chain of restaurants, one of which shares a parking lot with the motel on the West Side of Cleveland where...
The American Scholar
The Duckling The post The Duckling appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The Elysian
Every country ranked from best to worst A report card for the whole world.
a week ago
The American Scholar
Gone Fishin’ Could two famous rivermen really have met their end while grappling giant fish in a Kansas...
a week ago
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a week ago
Could two famous rivermen really have met their end while grappling giant fish in a Kansas river? The post Gone Fishin’ appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Praise Cannot Be Totally Denied' “[William] Somervile has tried many modes of poetry; and though perhaps he has not in any reached...
a week ago
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a week ago
“[William] Somervile has tried many modes of poetry; and though perhaps he has not in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be said at least, that ‘he writes very well for a gentleman.’”   The well-read reader new to Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Most...
The American Scholar
Helping Doug At a tent encampment in Oregon, one man struggles to survive as medical volunteers try to bring a...
a week ago
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a week ago
At a tent encampment in Oregon, one man struggles to survive as medical volunteers try to bring a meas-ure of light to dark, uncertain days The post Helping Doug appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Ralph Roister Doister, among the first regular English comedies - Then to our recorder with... Ralph Roister Doister (written c. 1550, published 1567) once had the distinction of being the first...
a week ago
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a week ago
Ralph Roister Doister (written c. 1550, published 1567) once had the distinction of being the first comedy in English.  Please see this 1911 edition of the play calling it “the first regular English comedy.”  I do not know what 19th century critics meant by “regular” but this...
Anecdotal Evidence
At the Bookstore I work hard to resist sentimental impulses and indulgence in nostalgia. Ours is a sentimental age,...
a week ago
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a week ago
I work hard to resist sentimental impulses and indulgence in nostalgia. Ours is a sentimental age, and at the same time an angry, unforgiving age. One strain of sentimentality especially prevalent among the aging is a rueful, self-pitying lament for what no longer exists....
The American Scholar
The Stolen Lines The post The Stolen Lines appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The Marginalian
Embodiment and the (Re)invention of Emoji, from the Aztecs to Humboldt and Darwin to AI By the time he published Vues des Cordillères, et monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique,...
a week ago
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a week ago
By the time he published Vues des Cordillères, et monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique, Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769–May 6, 1859), barely in his forties, was the world’s most eminent and polymathic naturalist (the word scientist was yet to be coined)....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Own Heaven-Created Palimpsest' I first encountered the word palimpsest more than half a century ago in Flann O’Brien’s 1939 novel...
a week ago
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a week ago
I first encountered the word palimpsest more than half a century ago in Flann O’Brien’s 1939 novel At Swim-Two-Birds and found it immediately useful. Here’s the OED’s strict, non-figurative definition:  “A parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been...
The Marginalian
A Heron, a Red Leaf, and a Hole in a Blue Star: Poet Jane Kenyon on the Art of Letting Go The vital force of life is charged by the poles of holding on and letting go. We know that the price...
a week ago
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a week ago
The vital force of life is charged by the poles of holding on and letting go. We know that the price of love is loss, and yet we love anyway; that our atoms will one day belong to generations of other living creatures who too will die in turn, and yet we press them hard against...
The American Scholar
What Lies Beneath the Levee Camp Holler Eric McHenry investigates a century-old crime preserved in music The post What Lies Beneath the...
a week ago
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a week ago
Eric McHenry investigates a century-old crime preserved in music The post What Lies Beneath the Levee Camp Holler appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Impossible Not to Be Entertained' “In those days when Bedlam was open to the cruel curiosity of holyday ramblers, I have been a...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
“In those days when Bedlam was open to the cruel curiosity of holyday ramblers, I have been a visitor there. Though a boy, I was not altogether insensible of the misery of the poor captives, nor destitute of feeling for them.”  The English poet William Cowper, a veteran of...
This Space
Reading, forgetting In an in-between time in which nothing begins or ends, in which blank patience takes the place of...
2 weeks ago
20
2 weeks ago
In an in-between time in which nothing begins or ends, in which blank patience takes the place of activity, I picked two books from my shelves stubbornly remote from utility, lacking the intimacy of possession, and a third in which I had never read a key section. The first was...
The Elysian
Office Hours An experimental salon.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Death of Discourse' As a boy I was often told I spoke too loudly. It makes sense, as I came from a family of yellers....
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
As a boy I was often told I spoke too loudly. It makes sense, as I came from a family of yellers. It’s an annoying habit, usually inappropriate, one I associate with self-centeredness. I made a conscious effort to lower the volume, a rare instance of successfully stifling an...
The American Scholar
Immaculate Innings At the ballpark on a summer night in Baltimore The post Immaculate Innings appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
At the ballpark on a summer night in Baltimore The post Immaculate Innings appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
a fantastic universe where the presence of man was not foreseen - Maurice Herzog's Annapurna: First... Books that generate other books, books that are first in the line, interest me.  Despite...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Books that generate other books, books that are first in the line, interest me.  Despite little interest in mountaineering, I read Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak (1951, tr. Nea Morin and Janet Adam Smith) by Maurice Herzog, the subject of the book well summarized...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seldom Softened By Any Appearance of Gaiety' In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
In his critical works, Samuel Johnson respected tradition if not reputation or even physical appearance. He could be eloquently brutish and write of Jonathan Swift:  “The person of Swift had not many recommendations. He had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he washed...
The American Scholar
Tiny Acts The post Tiny Acts appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
Collaborative writing A common phenomenon in the history of literature is couples writing together.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Undersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World “The book of love is full of music,” sings Peter Gabriel. “In fact, that’s where music comes from.”...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
“The book of love is full of music,” sings Peter Gabriel. “In fact, that’s where music comes from.” The book of love is written in the language of wonder — our best means of loving life more deeply. To love anything — a person, a pond, the world — is to see the wonder in it, to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Aesthetics My Primary Value' The Louisiana poet Gail White published three poems in Peacock Journal, all freighted with...
2 weeks ago
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The Louisiana poet Gail White published three poems in Peacock Journal, all freighted with serious thought and all skirting the charms of light verse. White avoids the failings of pretentiousness and mere silliness. Consider “Resemblances”:  “Somewhere along the primrose...
The American Scholar
“Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Are we living in heaven or hell? It's a showdown between Elysium and Tartarus.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Would If Possible Imitate a Tree' Yet another hero of autodidacticism is Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the English physicist and...
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2 weeks ago
Yet another hero of autodidacticism is Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the English physicist and chemist who discovered electromagnetic induction, which eventually led to development of inductors and transformers, and such devices as electric motors and generators. True to the...
The American Scholar
Cici Osias Sewing cultures together The post Cici Osias appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Talked About Philip Larkin' Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He loved garage sales and thrift shops and had no shame about looking for second-hand bargains. He liked the English expression “jumble sale.” Ken wasn’t cheap but never seemed to have enough...
The Marginalian
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements... “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we know how to order it to perform,” Ada Lovelace inveighed upon composing the world’s first algorithm for the world’s first computer. Meanwhile, she was reckoning with the nature...