Zest for Art

"Striving for the unreachable is really quite splendid."

~ Rudolf Serkin (quoted in Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber, Rudolf Serkin: A Life)

The upper reaches of the art world are marked by an absence of principle, taste, and embarrassment, says Jed Perl. Art is now afantasy object for the rich... Unreachable

Catholics compose one-quarter of the American population, yet they’ve retreated to the point of invisibility from literary culture. Why?... The Mystery of Spiritual Trends

Was Shakespeare more significant than Darwin, or Mill more than Malthus? Can greatness be quantified? Cass Sunstein has his doubts... Artists of Subjectivity

Is suicide a valid escape from misery, as Hume believed, the right of every individual? Or is it a moral transgression? On such questions, secularism has lost its way... The Choices of Death