George Searles, editor, Conversations with Philip Roth Literary Conversation Series University Press of Mississippi 1992 I settled in this morning with a collection of interviews with Philip Roth, from the bright beginning of his career…
In the early 1980s Harold Bloom noted about his experience of decades at Yale University that “[t]here is a profound falling away from what I would call ‘text-centeredness” among the current generation of American undergraduates,…
In the early 1980s Harold Bloom noted about his experience of decades at Yale University that “[t]here is a profound falling away from what I would call ‘text-centeredness” among the current generation of American undergraduates,…
Last January, I started a discussion group based on one of my favorite podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. This January, I was hired on by the podcast to help manage dozens of local…
John Armstrong, Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007 Almost twelve years ago I read this book, and the themes of Bildung and mastery were most…
111. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. –Simone Weil 222. When [Arthur Waley] was at work, all else was eliminated. –Ivan Morris 333. Whenever I…
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Knopf: Everyman’s Library, 1992 I’ve acknowledged previously the importance of Reinaldo Arenas and Eduardo Galeano during the late 1990s into 2000 as I was trying to figure out…
400. If a man reads a book because it interests him and reads in all directions for the same reason, his reading is pure and interests me. –Ralph Waldo Emerson 500. The poor play a…
51. Neal looks older, Jewish, very serious and on powerful integrity drive. –Allen Ginsberg, letter to Jack Kerouac 151. In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, “I have attained something.” All self-centered thoughts limit…
What I’m Reading This Week Raul Hilberg, The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian Aharon Shabtai, War & Love, Love & War: New and Selected Poems Nathan A. Scott, Mirrors of Man…