“The key to writing biography is the capacity to be empathetic,” says James Atlas, who failed in that regard when writing his book on Saul Bellow... Saul Bellow
‘I’m worried’ says Hillary Clinton as she attacks Trump and Putin in Cheltenham Literature Festival talk Gloucestershire Live (also, avocado sandwiches).
VARIETY: Judgment Day: Harvey Weinstein Scandal Could Finally Change Hollywood’s Culture of Secrecy. “There’s a vicious cycle of emotional violence. People come into the industry, working grueling hours in agency mail rooms or as production assistants on film sets, where they are screamed at and belittled. As they rise, they hurl the same invective at underlings that they once were forced to endure
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Method to Trump’s ‘Madness.’ “Pollsters, pundits, and the media have vastly underestimated how many in America loathe multimillionaire celebrities, pampered athletes, and triangulating politicians—the usual targets of Trump’s invective.”
The midlife crisis, first described by psychologists in 1965, is a first-world problem, but it's a problem nonetheless. The first rule of crisis prevention: avoid self-absorption 1965
In an age when truth is dismissed as fiction, the novel matters more because we all live by fictions. It’s how we get to the truth Truth of alternative
The Conversation: “Today’s students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers. Teachers, parents and policymakers certainly acknowledge the growing influence of technology and have responded in kind. We’ve seen more investment in classroom technologies, with students now equipped with school-issued iPads and access to e-textbooks. In 2009, California passed a law requiring that all college textbooks be available in electronic form by 2020; in 2011, Florida lawmakers passed legislation requiring public schools to convert their textbooks to digital versions. Given this trend, teachers, students, parents and policymakers might assume that students’ familiarity and preference for technology translates into better learning outcomes. But we’ve found that’s not necessarily true. As researchers in learning and text comprehension, our recent work has focused on the differences between reading print and digital media. While new forms of classroom technology like digital textbooks are more accessible and portable, it would be wrong to assume that students will automatically be better served by digital reading simply because they prefer it…To explore these patterns further, we conducted three studiesthat explored college students’ ability to comprehend information on paper and from screens…”
The Conversation: “Today’s students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers. Teachers, parents and policymakers certainly acknowledge the growing influence of technology and have responded in kind. We’ve seen more investment in classroom technologies, with students now equipped with school-issued iPads and access to e-textbooks. In 2009, California passed a law requiring that all college textbooks be available in electronic form by 2020; in 2011, Florida lawmakers passed legislation requiring public schools to convert their textbooks to digital versions. Given this trend, teachers, students, parents and policymakers might assume that students’ familiarity and preference for technology translates into better learning outcomes. But we’ve found that’s not necessarily true. As researchers in learning and text comprehension, our recent work has focused on the differences between reading print and digital media. While new forms of classroom technology like digital textbooks are more accessible and portable, it would be wrong to assume that students will automatically be better served by digital reading simply because they prefer it…To explore these patterns further, we conducted three studiesthat explored college students’ ability to comprehend information on paper and from screens…”
Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene are more readable than Henry Green. But Green is more rereadable — his opaque works reward our repeated attention Green
Giorgio Vasari was a second-rate artist and a first-rate gossip. Behold his catalog of piquant trivia about Renaissance Italy Vasari
Essays & Opinions
"The infatuation with portents — with the supposed relevance of voices from the past — is neither bread nor circus. It’s an obsession with history that can also be a form of amnesia" Amnesia