“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, […]
“Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur’s rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. Endless, would it […]
“‘Shakespeare said it best,’ Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at the lumpish, misshapen head. ‘Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us look to the best in each other.’” ––1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, pg. 873 “Choose any person in the world at random, […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]