Neal Stephenson’s Some Remarks is a highly stimulating read from my favorite living author. This collection of essays and short fiction sheds light on Stephenson’s personal background, writing methods, and modes of information synthesis. As always, we are treated to a very special version of the world––one seen through the eyes of an author who […]
“We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.” ––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 132 “Today’s belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age. In this environment, the best an audacious manager can do is to develop […]
“Everything speaks in its own way.” ––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 123 “A few years ago I began thinking that the bookish people of the world were becoming a little bit like medieval monks, living austere but intellectually complex lives in voluntary seclusion from a gaudy and action-packed secular world. I’ve written a novel, […]
In 1922, American philosopher John Dewey published Human Nature and Conduct, wherein he elucidated the relationship between freedom and knowledge. “The road to freedom,” he wrote, “may be found in that knowledge of facts which enables us to employ them in connection with desires and aims” (303). Dewey understood that human liberty and progress are […]
“The picture he conjured now came back with special vividness, as if it had been cleansed of all dust by last night’s rain. Unease and expectation and fear scattered to the farthest corners of the spacious classroom, and hid themselves in the room’s many objects like cowardly little animals. Tengo was able to re-create the […]
“‘They can forget about it,’ Ayumi said. ‘I never can.’ ‘Of course not,’ Aomame said. ‘It’s like some historic massacre.’ ‘Massacre?’ ‘The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They […]
“Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst […]
“A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person.” ––1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, pg. 132 “Freedom has little meaning without reference to power. Those who claim to be on the side of freedom while ignoring the growing imbalance of economic and political power in America and other advanced societies are not in fact […]
Wendell Berry is an author I’ve been meaning to get to for a long time. As a staunch defender of the environment and nonindustrial agriculture, Berry challenged my parents’ generation to think twice about the price of American modernity. This collection of essays from the 1970s and 80s does just that, and in much richer […]
“‘I understood in a moment of stillness,’ Litima read. ‘Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble […]