Apropos Kerouac’s Sal Paradise feeling like “a speck on the surface of the sad red earth,” the following from John Updike on the influence of science on our sense of our place in the universe: The non-scientist’s relation to modern science is basically craven: we look to its discoveries and technology to save us from […]
A Late Homage to John Updike
If you missed it, the February 9 & 16 issue of The New Yorker offered representative samples of Updike’s over fifty years as a contributor of short stories, poetry, essays and criticism. This excerpt is from his memoir A Soft Spring Night in Shillington, in which he ruminates on the pleasure of finding close shelter […]
Artful Humanity
Denis Dutton’s new book, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution, argues that art is not a social construct, but hardwired through evolutionary development into human being. Which is what I’ve always argued. He just wrote the book. AJA
Harold Pinter
It is one of the characteristics of art – the greater the art, the greater the characteristic – that it points to (“captures” would precisely misstate the idea) the complexity of nature, of situation, of emotion, of expression, of judgment: the entire human calculus. It is so much so that rarely may the creator be […]
This Time, Shop with Meaning
Books Blog tells us how shopping, for Emma Bovary and others, not only busts bank accounts, but expands horizons. It is a dream of the cosmopolis. Now it’s true that Madame Bovary’s racking up of credit and her consequent response when the bailiffs come knocking should be a dire lesson for us all. But for […]