Walt Whitman writing of a walk in the woods —and now that we’re left to walk outdoors somewhat alone and think… : A Quintette “While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great oak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the drops all around,) I have penc … | Continue reading
Susan Sontag in NYRB (February 23, 1978): Punitive notions of disease have a long history, and such notions are particularly active with cancer. There is the “fight” or “crusade” against cancer; cancer is the “killer” disease; people who have cancer are “cancer victims.” Ostensib … | Continue reading
Terry Eagleton at The Guardian: Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Lonely people feel the need for company, while solitary types seek to escape it. The neatest definition of loneliness, David Vincent writes in his superb new study, is “failed solitude”. Another difference be … | Continue reading
Patricia Hampl at The Paris Review: Mother Tongue is “an American life,” as its subtitle says, lived in provincial, family-laden Parma (not international Rome, not the Amalfi coast, nor a restored Tuscan villa). This is a life knocked wonderfully off-balance (well, wonderful for … | Continue reading
Arthur Goldhammer reviews Branko Milanovic’s Capitalism Alone: The Future of the System that Rules the World over at Democracy: In certain quarters of the United States it is taken for granted nowadays that capitalism has failed or at the very least fallen into desperate crisis, … | Continue reading
Anna Stansbury and Lawrence H. Summers (yes, that one!) over at Brookings: Increased monopoly power is commonly believed to explain the trends in labor income and corporate profits—but it is hard to reconcile with the substantial falls in average unemployment and inflation over t … | Continue reading
Nick Martin in TNR: This is a time to sustain. To find ease where we can in a world rapidly placing us into chaos. “We do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way,” Odell wrote. But we should. This piece, the one you’re reading right now, took roughly an … | Continue reading
Adam Tooze in the NYT: For the second time this century, the world is facing an acute shortage of dollar funding. This is a big problem: An enormous amount of global financial activity depends on the use of the dollar. If we are to contain the fallout from the crisis, America’s c … | Continue reading
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Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: The president of the United States is a menace to public health. I don’t mean that I disagree with him on policy, although I do. I don’t mean that I abhor the president’s expressed bigotry toward religious and ethnic minorities, although that is also … | Continue reading
Alex Perez in Tablet Magazine: The woke literati have trouble understanding how a Cuban American whose first language is Spanish can feel a deep kinship with writers like Richard Ford and Barry Hannah, a pair of Southerners who look absolutely nothing like me and certainly don’t … | Continue reading
Redbud Flamingo-beaked buds open on bare branches. Pollen-drunk, the long-tongued bees mount bright blossoms. Startled, petals burst pink against a blue sky. Only after the gaudy show— tender leaves, red-rimmed, unfold, grow into a heart. Monarch Butterflies on Joe-Pye Weed You c … | Continue reading
Paul Elie in The New Yorker: In retrospect—in the rueful retrospect we are living in already—we’ll say that the virus was there all along, in the circumstances that enabled it to spread. It was there in a globally integrated society of travel, work, and commerce, the connecting a … | Continue reading
Martin Gayford at The Spectator: To ‘review’ such supreme paintings is slightly absurd. These are the touchstones from which Rubens, Velazquez and Rembrandt learnt and their successors still do. Van Dyck actually owned ‘Perseus and Andromeda’; Lucian Freud confessed that he, too, … | Continue reading
Will Wiles at Literary Review: There are few reading pleasures that compare with a passionate expert describing their work, and Ziminski stands proudly in this field. He is a mason working in the West Country, repairing and restoring prehistoric tombs, stone circles, Roman fragme … | Continue reading
Andrea Crisanti and Antonio Cassone in The Guardian: It’s now about one month since Covid-19 began to sweep across Italy. With more than total cases topping 40,000 as of 19 March, it is now the worst-affected country outside of China. But in the last two weeks, a promising pilot … | Continue reading
Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times: Here’s the grimmest version of life a year from now: More than two million Americans have died from the new coronavirus, almost all mourned without funerals. Countless others have died because hospitals are too overwhelmed to deal adequatel … | Continue reading
Nick Farriella in McSweeney’s: Dearest Rosemary, It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The st … | Continue reading
Jasmine Almost the twenty-first century” — how quickly the thought will grow dated, even quaint. Our hopes, our future, will pass like the hopes and futures of others. And all our anxieties and terrors, nights of sleeplessness, griefs, will appear then as they truly are — Stumbli … | Continue reading
Kori Schake in The Atlantic: The National Security Strategy that President Donald Trump published during his first year in office describes an “America First foreign policy in action.” In an introductory message, the president declares, “We are prioritizing the interests of our c … | Continue reading
Scott Koenig in Nautilus: During the Spanish flu of 1918, it was Vick’s VapoRub. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, it was canned food. Now, as the number of cases of COVID-19 grows worldwide, it’s, among other things, toilet paper. In times of precarity, people often resort t … | Continue reading
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian: It seems incredible that we should find common cause with the people of 500 years ago, who faced disease without any understanding or remotely adequate treatment. But on Sunday, Pope Francis walked the streets of Rome, left empty by coronavirus, to … | Continue reading
Jessie Gaynor in Lit Hub: Moby-Dick FaceTime me, Ishmael. Jane Eyre There was every possibility of taking a walk that day, as long as we kept six feet between us and the others on the path. Pride and Prejudice It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possessio … | Continue reading
Marta Figlerowicz at Public Books: In the late 19th century—as in the early 21st century—ordinary people were swept up in the new craze of portrait photography. “Our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus,” writes Charles Baudelaire, “to contemplate its trivial image on a metal … | Continue reading
Christopher Spaide at Poetry Magazine: One of English’s great, scornful, scorching political poems was premiered in an unassuming place: the postscript of a letter: “What a state England is in! But you will never write politics.” It was December 1819, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, th … | Continue reading
Lindsay Zoladz at Bookforum: On screen and off, Edwards came to see something in Andrews that Kael—and other critics like her—could not. Underneath her wimple, as the nuns say of Maria, Andrews had curlers in her hair. Yes, in nearly every role she comports herself like the queen … | Continue reading
Anita Ho in Aeon: ‘I wouldn’t show them the note,’ a retired nurse, told my mother. It was a request to meet with my father’s physicians. He had undergone a cardiac surgery, and soon after became lethargic and difficult to rouse. The nurses thought he was simply fatigued from his … | Continue reading
John Heil in IAI News: Why is consciousness so perplexing to so many? Perhaps, owing to our being conscious, we regard ourselves as experts on the matter, and it seems to us blindingly obvious that consciousness could not possibly be a brain state or process. We have a front-row … | Continue reading
NATALIE DIAZ, “The Mustangs” from Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb on Vimeo. | Continue reading
Migration rows assemble in the bare elm above our house. Restless, staring: like souls who want back in life. —And who wouldn’t want again the hot bath after hard work, with soft canyons of splitting foam; or the glass of spring wat … | Continue reading
Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe: This is a special episode of Mindscape, thrown together quickly. Many thanks to Tara Smith for joining me on short notice. Tara is an epidemiologist, and a great person to talk to about the novel coronavirus (and its associated disease, COVI … | Continue reading
by S. Abbas Raza Since I live in northern Italy, a few friends in America have privately asked me if I have any advice for them as America now heads for the situation Italy has been facing. Most recently, my friend Anna Hall wrote this, “Are you ok Abbas? We are about to follow I … | Continue reading
Yuval Noah Harari in Time: Many people blame the coronavirus epidemic on globalization, and say that the only way to prevent more such outbreaks is to de-globalize the world. Build walls, restrict travel, reduce trade. However, while short-term quarantine is essential to stop epi … | Continue reading
Gideon Lichfield in the MIT Technology Review: To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members. We all want things to go back to normal quickly. … | Continue reading
Jonathan Kay in Quillette: The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared COVID-19—the acute respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus—a pandemic. And almost everywhere you look, the data appear to show a frightening exponential rise in new cases. As I write this, on M … | Continue reading
Jennifer Ouellette in Ars Technica: One of the best-known sketches from Monty Python’s Flying Circus features John Cleese as a bowler-hatted bureaucrat with the fictional Ministry of Silly Walks. It’s a classic of physical comedy, right up there with the troupe’s Dead Parrot sket … | Continue reading
Liesl Schillinger at Lit Hub: Usually a question like this is theoretical: What would it be like to find your town, your state, your country, shut off from the rest of the world, its citizens confined to their homes, as a contagion spreads, infecting thousands, and subjecting tho … | Continue reading
Sarah Neilson at The Seattle Times: The words social distancing have already defined 2020, and everyone is already tired of them (and coronavirus, for that matter). Despite how terrible it feels to not be close to people, this is what community care looks like right now. Luckily, … | Continue reading
Robinson Jr. and Melton Jr. in The Atlantic: Old age, said the ancient Greek philosopher Bion of Borysthenes, is “the harbour of all ills; at least they all take refuge there.” While the quotation is obviously nothing new, some things do change, among these society’s pace of life … | Continue reading
David Cyranoski in Nature: As the new coronavirus marches around the globe, countries with escalating outbreaks are eager to learn whether China’s extreme lockdowns were responsible for bringing the crisis there under control. Other nations are now following China’s lead and limi … | Continue reading