Japaneseness
In the 90s, phrases like “global village” and “global economy” were increasingly common. The technologies that have emerged since then allow us incredible possibilities of connecting and learning. Think … besides anime, what do we…
Category: Reading
Anne Waldman on The Art of Writing, Reading, and Sharing—Winter Class/Arco-Online 2020
Imagine you are not alone. Consort with other writers. You are in a League of Writing. You are part of a conspiracy to lift the discourse and practice of writing higher. Think of your writing…
Dedication
Nathalie Vanderlinden takes a passion for Proust to a new, public level! Though Proust had a Jewish mother, he seems to me neither Christian nor Jewish. His wisdom is his own, and though it has…
Reading Roth on Writing and Reading
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…
What Is Vaster
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,…
What Is Vaster
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,…
Share the Wealth with Maggie Needham: From Treating Harry Potter as Sacred to Treating Each Other as Sacred
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…
Neither Conformism Nor Eccentricity
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…
Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/10
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…
Her Vivacity Gladdened Life
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…