BoredReading

Imagine Water Otherwise: Robert Macfarlane on the Personhood of Rivers and the Meaning of Aliveness

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless “refutation” of time. “No one can build you the bridge on...

'When the Heart is Full . . .'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“You say truly, that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I really think those have the worst of it who are left by...

The Birthmark

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post The Birthmark appeared first on The American Scholar.

Our community round has opened—let's fund this book!

2 months ago

from The Elysian in literature

+ Join our call tonight!

Compatible Observations of Great Men

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed instinctively to the past, against what he saw as...

The Wanting Monster: An Almost Unbearably Tender Illustrated Spell Against the Curse of Not Enough

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your serenity, the hammer that shatters your wholeness...

How Silicon Valley got rich

2 months ago

from The Elysian in literature

And how everyone else can get rich too.

On the pleasure of reading private notebooks

2 months ago

from Escaping Flatland in literature

One reason I like this genre is that people censor themselves less when they are writing in private.

'All of Time is Cut in Two—Before and After'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 17: “So Shakespeare...

Raising Hare: The Moving Story of How a Helpless Creature Helped a Workaholic Wake Up from the Trance of Near-living and Rewild Her Soul

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

Narrow the aperture of your attention enough to take in any one thing fully, and it becomes a portal to everything. Anneal that attention enough so...

Apagón

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post Apagón appeared first on The American Scholar.

'Alone in a Room with the English Language'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“One of the offices of poetry: to use shapely speech to express the radicals of existence in all their ambiguity.” “Shapely speech” is nicely put....

“A Blessing” by James Wright

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “A Blessing” by James Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.

A mighty contagious absence, part two

2 months ago

from This Space in literature

On submission and resistance to AI-generated literature To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work...

''T is But the Graves That Stay'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“Above the town of Frankfort, on the top of the steep bluff of the Kentucky River, is a burial-place where lie the bones of many heroes, sons the...

Tessa G. O’Brien

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Expansiveness and wonder The post Tessa G. O’Brien appeared first on The American Scholar.

'The Conception of Life As an Enchanted State'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a growth of poplars and sassafras to the place where...

Owl Lake: A Vintage Treasure from Japanese Artist Keizaburo Tejima

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of the most exasperating things in life, but also...

'He’s Not the Only One'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

My newly graduated youngest son is visiting Thailand with friends from his alma mater, Rice University. Most of the photos he has sent document meals...

Lingua Obscura

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Laura Spinney on the spread of Proto-Indo-European The post Lingua Obscura appeared first on The American Scholar.

When writing, look at what you are trying to describe more than at your words

2 months ago

from Escaping Flatland in literature

9 reflections

'For I Have Renounced Happiness'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“Happiness is the search for happiness.” I’m not so sure. My understanding is that there are no happy lives, only happy moments. Those moments seem...

An Enigma at the Center

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The story of the American West in one photograph The post An Enigma at the Center appeared first on The American Scholar.

Anthony Powell's style and sensibility - Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and sensational, played to an audience of one

2 months ago

from Wuthering Expectations in literature

Nicholas Jenkins – I did not register his name at all for the entire first novel, but I know it now – goes to school, gets a job in publishing, writes...

Is Peace Possible

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

Is Peace Possible?, originally published in 1957, is the second title in Marginalian Editions. Below is my foreword to the new edition as it appears...

'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which...

Engulfed

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post Engulfed appeared first on The American Scholar.

Who should control AI?

2 months ago

from The Elysian in literature

Nonprofits aren't our only option.

'He Wanted Only Time'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

My brother’s yahrzeit – the first anniversary of his death last summer – is approaching. His death was the most intimate I have experienced. I spent...

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden appeared first on The American Scholar.

How A Dance to the Music of Time works, so far - I always enjoy hearing the details of other people’s lives, whether imaginary or not

2 months ago

from Wuthering Expectations in literature

My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not. So let’s have that about the first four novels of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music...

'There Is Only Man'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored it.” Infatuation of the literary sort is likely...

“The Jester’s Magma”

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post “The Jester’s Magma” appeared first on The American Scholar.

The Pain and the God Within You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and Creativity

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss between us, a container for thought and feeling...

'Poetry That Nobody Nowadays Reads'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Once I patronized a library book sale where volumes were sold not by age, condition, whether paperback or hard cover, and certainly not by literary...

How Should You Live Your Life: Marie Howe’s Spare, Stunning Poem “The Maples”

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

“Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in one of the most...

'Read Well, Read Little'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief and not terribly helpful: Vanity Fair. It’s the...

Preface to notes on the first four novels of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time

2 months ago

from Wuthering Expectations in literature

In France, at the Lyon public library, I was surprised to bump into so many romans fleuves, whatever those are. They were notable on the shelf...

Annie Dillard on Unselfconsciousness

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

Walking through the white-walled gallery at the graduation show of one of New York’s most esteemed art schools, between beautiful young people with...

'The War with What He Does Not Understand'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one or another type of knowledge to exist, whereas I’m...

CITY STATE: A discussion about autonomous governance

2 months ago

from The Elysian in literature

Here's the recording from our literary salon discussion.

Isotopes, Vikings, Mars

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

We are perishable matter yearning for meaning, and time is both the matter and the meaning of our lives. “Time is a river that sweeps me along but I...

'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which...

White Easter

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post White Easter appeared first on The American Scholar.

On a Phrase by Jane Greer

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.” Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance? Sometimes it swells and the windows seem to...

“That Day” by Nikki Giovanni

2 months ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “That Day” by Nikki Giovanni appeared first on The American Scholar.

120 million employee-owners in one generation

2 months ago

from The Elysian in literature

We have a moonshot opportunity to make the bottom half way richer. Here’s how we take it.

What problem should you be working on now?

2 months ago

from Escaping Flatland in literature

How to filter problems worth solving from problems worth quitting?

'Fanaticisms and Factiousnesses Too'

2 months ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“History is not some past from which we are cut off. We are merely at its forward edge as it unrolls. And only if one is without historical feeling at...

Václav Havel on How to Live with Your Greatest Failure

2 months ago

from The Marginalian in literature

Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the “fail better” of startup culture, not the “fail...