Deborah Levy at Literary Review: Earth was dying. We had five years left to live. Ziggy Stardust, the bisexual alien rock star, was sent from another planet to grey, binary 1970s Britain to give us a message of hope. I’m not sure about the hope part of the message, but he really … | Continue reading
Ziggy Stardust 1972 Posted on Tuesday, Apr 9, 2024 10:07AMTuesday, April 9, 2024 by Morgan Meis | Continue reading
Derek Bok in Harvard Magazine: IN DECEMBER, the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT were summoned to appear before a congressional committee. For five hours, they were subjected to withering interrogation about the response of their universities to the harassment and intimidatio … | Continue reading
Saima Sidik in Nature: In 2010, Theresa Chaklos was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia — the first in a series of ailments that she has had to deal with since. She’d always been an independent person, living alone and supporting herself as a family-law facilitator in th … | Continue reading
Motion If you are the amber mare ……………. I am the road of blood If you are the first snow ……………. I am he who lights the hearth of dawn If you are the tower of light ……………. I am the spike burning in your mind If you are the morning tide ……………. I am… | Continue reading
by Richard Farr I’m writing this 37,000 feet above Vestmannaeyjar, a chain of islands off Iceland’s south coast. Or so the screen tells me – I can’t see the view because I’m wedged into 38E, a middle seat at the back near the loos. The ambient noise and vibration are roughly what … | Continue reading
Stardust —on a celestial photo look to the spiral arc of stars of which the nearest star and you are part and see your milky way and climb your finite climb and run your finite run and whirl and turn and wind while they spin their finite spin and glow their finite glow and give y … | Continue reading
by Mark Harvey Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book… —President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953 The other day I stopped in at one of those coworkin … | Continue reading
Kathleen Ryan. Bad Lemon (Creep), 2019. Amazonite, aventurine, black onyx, Italian onyx, turquoise, labradorite, carnelian, ocean jasper, sesame jasper, serpentine, fluorite, Ching Hai jade, snow quartz, magnesite, agate, breccicated jasper, rhodonite, rhodochrosite, red agate, g … | Continue reading
by Mike Bendzela The term “Little Apocalypse” is borrowed from New Testament studies, referring to the Olivet Discourse in Jerusalem. This speech first appeared around the year 70 CE, in Chapter 13 of the original written gospel, the Gospel of Mark. After the scene of the cleansi … | Continue reading
by Ed Simon Demonstrating the utility of a critical practice that’s sometimes obscured more than its venerable history would warrant, my 3 Quarks Daily column will be partially devoted to the practice of traditional close readings of poems, passages, dialogue, and even art. If yo … | Continue reading
by Andrea Scrima Americans are often smiled upon for their need to identify with their ancestors’ heritage; there’s something naïve and childlike about it, as though we were hoping to find a family somewhere, waiting with open arms for the long-lost child who has finally come hom … | Continue reading
“These are dry, didn’t you soak the stems in a vase before you came here?” Mother said as I showered blood red rose petals on her grave. by Rafiq Kathwari | Continue reading
by Carol A Westbrook The sun has always been an object of fascination and interest, appearing as it does as a bright, shining sphere crossing the daytime sky. On Monday, April 8, many of us will have had the opportunity to see the sun in all its glory as the moon crosses between … | Continue reading
Yascha Mounk and Alexandra Hudson in Persuasion: Alexandra Hudson is a writer, an adjunct professor at the Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy, and the founder of the publication Civic Renaissance. Hudson’s first book is The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to He … | Continue reading
Harry Cliff at Literary Hub: The first thing to understand is that all measurements come with “uncertainties” or “errors,” two words often used interchangeably. The uncertainly on a measurement is an expression of the precision with which we think we have measured a particular qu … | Continue reading
Will Glovinsky at Public Books: It was 1968, and the “battle to feed all of humanity” had already been lost. In the coming 1970s, soaring populations and finite global resources would lead hundreds of millions of people to starve to death. Or so prophesized Paul and Anne Ehrlich … | Continue reading
Evan Gurney in The Hedgehog Review: “You need to work on your face.” I am neither an actor nor a clown and certainly not a model—I teach literature at a university. Far from friendly advice from a colleague, these were serious instructions from an administrative superior. I was m … | Continue reading
Sue Prideaux in The Guardian: Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Charles Darwin are the great triumvirate of 19th-century thinkers whose ideas still have huge impact today. Nietzsche was philosophy’s supreme iconoclast; his sayings include “God is dead” and “There are no facts, o … | Continue reading
The Blessings of Eve The toe of the dancer’s bright body sustains the weight of her descent. What use would be rising if we did not fall? So Eve in the garden, tired of the spirit voices of Adam and God discussing hermeneutics, gravely watches the apple drop, then fills her mouth … | Continue reading
Margaret Tynes (1919 – 2024) Opera Singer Posted on Sunday, Apr 7, 2024 7:33AMSaturday, April 6, 2024 by Morgan Meis | Continue reading
Louis Gossett Jr. (1936 – 2024) Actor Posted on Sunday, Apr 7, 2024 7:31AMSaturday, April 6, 2024 by Morgan Meis | Continue reading
Maryse Condé (1934 – 2024) Writer Posted on Sunday, Apr 7, 2024 7:29AMSaturday, April 6, 2024 by Morgan Meis | Continue reading
Suzanne Schneider in Aeon: I am sitting in my daughter’s hospital room – she is prepping for a common procedure – when the surgeon pulls up a chair. I expect he will review the literal order of operations and offer the comforting words parents and children require even in the fac … | Continue reading
Hans Kundnani in The Ideas Letter: The idea of a “Blob” goes back to Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s foreign-policy adviser–or “amanuensis,” as Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine called him. The term first comes up in a profile of Rhodes in The New York Times Magazine … | Continue reading
Rajan Menon in Boston Review: n Friday, March 22, gunmen toting assault rifles stormed Crocus City Hall, west of Moscow in the Krasnogorsk district, shot the guards and, as graphic videos show, opened fire on the concert audience without restraint. More than 6,000 tickets had bee … | Continue reading
David Shariatmadari and Percival Everett at The Guardian: Everett has spoken in the past with frustration about Erasure looming so large in his body of work. Does he still feel that way? “The only thing that ever pissed me off is that everyone agreed with it. No one took issue, o … | Continue reading
Jennifer Szalai at the NYT: Despite its notoriously opaque prose, Butler’s best-known book, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” (1990), has been both credited and blamed for popularizing a multitude of ideas, including some that Butler doesn’t propound, like … | Continue reading
Who’s Afraid Of Gender? Judith Butler Posted on Saturday, Apr 6, 2024 8:18AMSaturday, April 6, 2024 by Morgan Meis | Continue reading
Nicholas Cannariato in Slate: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, pen name Lewis Carroll, is best known as the Victorian-era author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, out of obscurity, comes Lewis Carroll’s Guide for Insomniacs, a charmingly odd little book. From reasoning problems … | Continue reading
Otherwise I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach, It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might… | Continue reading
Meg Bernhard at Hazlitt: In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops … | Continue reading
Dennis Overbye in the New York Times: On Thursday, astronomers who are conducting what they describe as the biggest and most precise survey yet of the history of the universe announced that they might have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of dark energy, the mysteri … | Continue reading
Jacob Mchangama in Persuasion: Even though more people will cast a ballot in 2024 than any previous year, the prevailing mood seems more fearful than celebratory. In the words of Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the combination of online influence ca … | Continue reading
Tim Reinboth in Undark: Various commercial products known as “griefbots” create a simulation of a lost loved one. Built on artificial intelligence that makes use of large language models, or LLMs, the bots imitate the particular way the deceased person talked by using their email … | Continue reading
Adam Nagourney in The New York Times: Simon Rosenberg was right about the congressional elections of 2022. All the conventional wisdom — the polls, the punditry, the fretting by fellow Democrats — revolved around the expectation of a big red wave and a Democratic wipeout. He disa … | Continue reading
Lost Scriptures of Ancient Israel Posted on Friday, Apr 5, 2024 8:30AM by Morgan Meis | Continue reading
Jerry Saltz at Vulture: In the year 286, Emperor Diocletian began to formalize a division of the Roman Empire into two parts. The Western Roman Empire would go on to become something of a decaying backwater, while the eastern half of the empire — known by historians as the Byzant … | Continue reading
Walker Mimms at n+1: In McCarthy’s novels, people commit terrible acts—necrophilia, infanticide, cannibalism—and often with reason. His villains are symbols of that dark reason: the trio of swampland marauders in Outer Dark (1968), the dream-curdling scalp-hunter in Blood Meridia … | Continue reading
Ordinance on Arrival Welcome to you who have managed to get here It’s been a terrible trip; you should be happy you survived it. Statistics prove that not many do. You would like a bath, a hot meal, a good night’s sleep. Some of you need medical attention. None of this is availab … | Continue reading
Peter Gordon in the Asian Review of Books: How is a reviewer, faced with (yet another) excellent short-story collection, supposed to convey to readers a convincing rationale for “why this one?” To note that this author is Kazakh is necessary but insufficient; if diversity alone w … | Continue reading
Robin Chataut in The Conversation: Have you ever wondered how an email sent from New York arrives in Sydney in mere seconds, or how you can video chat with someone on the other side of the globe with barely a hint of delay? Behind these everyday miracles lies an unseen, sprawling … | Continue reading
Sam Klug in the Boston Review: But single expressions are merely “pieces of a man,” as Adam Shatz, quoting Gil Scott-Heron, observes in The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. In this timely and engaging new book—the first full-length biography in English sin … | Continue reading