“Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.” ––1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, pg. 474 “What would the new countervailing power seek to accomplish? As a first step, it would reform the nation’s system of campaign finance in order to get […]
“Who can possibly save all the people of the world? Tengo thought. You could bring all the gods of the world into one place, and still they couldn’t abolish nuclear weapons or eradicate terrorism. They couldn’t end the drought in Africa or bring John Lennon back to life. Far from it––the gods would just break […]
“‘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 […]
“In elementary and middle school, Tengo was utterly absorbed by the world of mathematics. Its clarity and absolute freedom enthralled him, and he also needed them to survive. Once he entered adolescence, however, he began to feel increasingly that this might not be enough. There was no problem as long as he was visiting the […]
“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 […]
“One cannot maintain one’s ‘competitive advantage’ if one helps other people. The advantage of ‘early adoption’ would disappear––it would not be thought of––in a community that put a proper value on mutual help. Such advantages would not be thought of by people intent on loving their neighbors as themselves. And it is impossible to imagine […]
Lately I’ve been wondering who’s going to take up Edward O. Wilson’s mantle after he dies. For decades, Wilson has penned accessible, intelligent books that help nonspecialists understand what he calls the “Evolutionary Epic”––the grand narrative of terrestrial life. “People need a sacred narrative,” Wilson wrote in 1998. “Homo sapiens is far more than a […]