Full Width [alt+shift+f] FOCUS MODE Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > literature
#all #programming #history #technology #startups #life #science #literature #creative #architecture #design #travel #finance #comics #AI #indiehacker #cartography Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
The American Scholar
Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on...
a month ago
41
a month ago
Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
What I Read in June 2025 - A life of agony was all for naught. My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded.  I read short, difficult...
a month ago
39
a month ago
My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded.  I read short, difficult books in French, and accidentally read several grim, sad, violent books, alongside some playful nonsense.   FICTION The Field of Life and Death (1935), Xiao Hong – For example.  Ninety...
The Marginalian
Vision of the Womb and Vision of the Brain: H.D. on the Two Kinds of Seeing and the Key to Over-mind... “One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational...
a month ago
23
a month ago
“One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.” As more and more of our senses are being amputated by the blade of our image-centric culture, reducing the vast and delicate sensorium of human...
The Elysian
Maybe an exowomb is better than pregnancy The Pod Generation’s near-future satire pits nature against technology. Which is the better curator?
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Looking in the Right Direction' News of certain public deaths remains rooted in memory to an indelible time and place. Famously,...
a month ago
17
a month ago
News of certain public deaths remains rooted in memory to an indelible time and place. Famously, millions of mundane lives intersected forever with the assassination of President Kennedy, which people recall in vivid detail more than sixty years later their reactions at that...
The American Scholar
Big Rock, High Plateau The post Big Rock, High Plateau appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Superintending What He Cannot Regulate' In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the...
a month ago
20
a month ago
In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the Y.” I have three sons, no daughters, and my brother, who died last summer, was my sole sibling. My mother had five brothers, no sisters. My father, two brothers, no sisters, etc....
The American Scholar
“The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The Elysian
How can we rewild the Earth at scale? From global targets to backyard projects
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fun Which Is Ebullient All Over Yours' A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend...
a month ago
20
a month ago
A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend to underline, boldface and italicize their every attempt at a pun, most of which are already feeble. Thus, the pun’s bad reputation and the ensuing groans. In contrast I love a good,...
The American Scholar
Greg Ito The life cycle of a candle The post Greg Ito appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Uncaging the Bird in the Mind: William Henry Hudson and the Gift of the Ruin of Your Best Laid Plans “The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote...
a month ago
28
a month ago
“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote Milton in Paradise Lost. Because the mind (which may in the end be a full-body phenomenon) is the cup that lifts the world to our lips to be tasted — a taste we call reality — it is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Ledge Itself Invents the Leap' Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of rationalism: “Explain it, and it goes away.” As a kid I fell for that, almost literally, when I tried to muscle my way with sheer will power past the Terminal Tower in downtown...
The Elysian
Democrats Need a Mamdani-Type to Win If you're still talking about his rent freeze and grocery policies, you're missing the point.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Anima: One Woman’s Search for Meaning in the Footsteps of Bulgarian Mountain Shepherds "All our lives we perform tasks while waiting for something to click into place. For somewhere to...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Susceptible to Education' I grew up fetishizing a university education. I knew no one in my family or in my working-class...
a month ago
27
a month ago
I grew up fetishizing a university education. I knew no one in my family or in my working-class neighborhood who had “gone to college,” as the common phrase had it. In my experience, that status was confined to doctors and teachers. My father was a high-school dropout....
The American Scholar
Once in a Lifetime Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared...
a month ago
28
a month ago
Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Neglected By-ways' Thomas Parker is a longtime reader and frequent commenter on this blog. On Monday’s post he recalled...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Thomas Parker is a longtime reader and frequent commenter on this blog. On Monday’s post he recalled a passage he thought may have been the work of George Saintsbury. Unable to track it down for attribution, he quoted from uncertain memory: “Nothing pains me more than the...
The Elysian
The future used to be better How contemporary art reflects our waning belief in progress.
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
The hare vaguely impressionistic reflections about what I've been up to + links to stuff I've enjoyed...
a month ago
39
a month ago
vaguely impressionistic reflections about what I've been up to + links to stuff I've enjoyed recently
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kitchen Perpetually Crowded with Savages' Jonathan Swift often stayed at Quilca, the country home of his friend the Rev. Thomas Sheridan...
a month ago
27
a month ago
Jonathan Swift often stayed at Quilca, the country home of his friend the Rev. Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738) in County Cavan, Ireland. There he wrote portions of Gulliver’s Travels. Not surprisingly, Swift was an inspired kvetcher. There’s a long tradition of English writers...
The American Scholar
Crystal Ball The post Crystal Ball appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Divinations of the First Light: A Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science...
a month ago
24
a month ago
At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science with her famous comet discovery, astronomer Maria Mitchell confided in one of her Vassar students that she would rather have authored a great poem than discovered a comet. A...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Silly, Trivial Things You Did When Young' “Of course, you live life forward and think about it backwards.”  I’ve spent the last month or so...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
“Of course, you live life forward and think about it backwards.”  I’ve spent the last month or so thinking about the summer of 1973, when I visited Europe for the first time. This retrospective was prompted by my youngest son, who graduated in May from Rice University and the...
The American Scholar
Verse 31 from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
A self-governing forest Terra0 thinks nature should become economically independent.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Needlessly Limited Accommodation' That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to stock their shelves, fill bulletin boards and placate administrators, is well-known and nobody says much about it. I’m uncertain what mysterious collective formulates this canon...
The Marginalian
How to Be a Stone: Three Poems for Trusting Time If you want to befriend time — which is how you come to befriend life — turn to stone. Climb a...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
If you want to befriend time — which is how you come to befriend life — turn to stone. Climb a mountain and listen to the conversation between eons encoded in each stripe of rock. Walk a beach and comb your fingers through the golden dust that was once a mountain. Pick up a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Between Virgil and Young People Engrossed in Rock' In a 2009 interview with a publication in Barcelona, Spain, Adam Zagajewski is asked a question...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
In a 2009 interview with a publication in Barcelona, Spain, Adam Zagajewski is asked a question about political correctness, euphemisms and other debasements of language. He replies: “There is the harsher side of existence -- disease and death -- and the loftier reasons for...
The Marginalian
Against Death: Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti on Grieving a Parent, Grieving the World, and What Makes... The year is 1937. Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994) — Bulgarian, Jewish, living in...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
The year is 1937. Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994) — Bulgarian, Jewish, living in Austria as the Nazis are rising to power — has just lost his mother; his mother, whose bottomless love had nurtured the talent that would win him the Nobel Prize in his seventies; his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Them at Any Rate Be Your Acquaintances' “Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”  An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
“Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”  An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a sort of litmus test to judge personality and values, might be to place your subject in a large, well-stocked library (or bookstore), wire him for blood pressure, heart rate, skin...
The American Scholar
No Murder in the Mews The post No Murder in the Mews appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
The Whole of It Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form of living against it and not with it — the pain of loss, aching for what has been and no longer is; the pain of longing, aching for what could be but is not yet and may never be;...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Pulls the Reader In' I grew up observing the Holy Trinity, the literary one: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. Faith told me...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
I grew up observing the Holy Trinity, the literary one: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. Faith told me these were the foundational figures who would sustain us. Reason and a lifetime of reading have confirmed my faith. I think of them as formulating the cultural oxygen that sustains...
The American Scholar
“Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon appeared first on The...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
No, we shouldn't return to the climate of the 18th century Improving the climate is a better goal than trying to fight change.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Idiot Hopefulness or Fathomless Exasperation' When my oldest son was about seven and already a movie enthusiast, we drove up to the Crandall...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
When my oldest son was about seven and already a movie enthusiast, we drove up to the Crandall Library in Glens Falls, N.Y. to watch Laurel and Hardy movies. I’d seen a notice in the paper. A film collector brought his own projector and a box of 16mm reels and set up in one of...
The American Scholar
Stephanie Santana Preserving family history The post Stephanie Santana appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Brought Us This Far' Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a reader asks. His assumption, never directly articulated, is that reading is compensation for the absence of something far more important. I suppose people have been facing...
The Elysian
Democracy should happen online A Guest Lecture with Margo Loor, co-founder of the Estonian participatory democracy platform Citizen...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
A Guest Lecture with Margo Loor, co-founder of the Estonian participatory democracy platform Citizen OS.
Anecdotal Evidence
'At a Quarter a Tome' I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I don’t mean what I pretended to do while in the company of professors, though many of them assigned books published in soft covers. I mean self-assigned literature, beginning as a kid...
The American Scholar
Family Values Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Silence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine... "Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'[C]onservatives Should Embrace the Novel' Fifteen years ago, in a blog post titled “Conservative novels,”  my friend the late D.G. Myers...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
Fifteen years ago, in a blog post titled “Conservative novels,”  my friend the late D.G. Myers critiqued a “top-ten” list of that literary species assembled by a writer at The National Review. David called the list “strangely disappointing,” and it’s tough to argue with that...
The Marginalian
The Arguers: A Charming Illustrated Parable about the Absurdity of Self-righteousness Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and disorientation, is that they turn human beings into opinion machines. We dope our pain and confusion with false certainties that stifle the willingness to understand (the nuances of...
The Elysian
We can terraform the Earth—not just Mars If we can revive a dead planet, we can revive our own.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What He Knows Who Looks Into Life and Sees' Most of my preoccupations lie elsewhere but I retain a casual interest in what used to be called...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Most of my preoccupations lie elsewhere but I retain a casual interest in what used to be called field biology. That is, the non-molecular, outside-the-laboratory practice of observing plants and animals, even in the middle of Houston. The motives are pleasure, wonder and...
The American Scholar
A Pair of Elephants The post A Pair of Elephants appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Wuthering...
A draft Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus In case yesterday’s invitation was a bit abstract, here is my current sense of a twenty-play...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
In case yesterday’s invitation was a bit abstract, here is my current sense of a twenty-play Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus that I would like to investigate beginning next fall.  I’ve read twelve of them. Please note that almost every date below should be preceded by “c.” ...
The American Scholar
Reasons for Living The post Reasons for Living appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago