“People don’t like reality. They don’t like common sense. Until age forces it on them.”
Literature Is A Technology, And It Should Be Taught Like One
Neuroscientist-turned-English-professor Angus Fletcher: “It’s a machine designed to work in concert with another machine, our brain. The purpose of the two machines is to accelerate each other. … We’ve been taught in school to interpret literature, to say what it means, to identify its themes and arguments. But when you do that, you’re working against literature. I’m saying we need to find these technologies, these inventions, and connect them to your head, see what they can do for your brain.” – Nautilus
THE STORIES YOU ALLOW IN YOUR HEAD SHAPE YOUR WORLD: Watch Your Head.
Douglas Murray on Greg Clark. By no means do I agree with Greg on everything, but he is one of the finest economic historians in the world.
Markus’ Academy and its influence (Bloomberg)
The peaceable kingdom? (photos
Redux of my November take on how Covid risk might rise once we are partially vaccinated
Christie’s will auction Beeple (NYT)
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Connie Palmen's Sylvia Plath-Ted Hughes novel, Your Story, My Story.
This 2015 novel got quite a bit of attention in Europe, but this recent English translation hasn't garnered much review-attention. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that it's an AmazonCrossing title (certainly not a favorite of booksellers anywhere (very few stock this)). But the subject matter would seem to appeal to quite a large audience -- and, indeed, last I checked there were a staggering 1,223 customer ratings at the US Amazon.com for this title. (Few titles reviewed at the complete review get more than a handful of ratings.)
By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Strait seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the Bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind?
