“In some domains, quantity is a poor substitute for quality. One solitary genius working out of a cork-lined bedroom can write In Search of Lost Time. Could an equivalent masterpiece be produced by recruiting an office building full of literary hacks? Even within the range of present human variation we see that some functions benefit […]
“It made his heart ache to look around the vast expanse of the fairground that, not very long ago, had swarmed with flags and women’s hats and people being whizzed around in jitneys, and see only a vista of mud and tarpaulins and blowing newspaper, broken up here and there by the spindly stump of […]
“A surprising fact about the magician Bernard Kornblum, Joe remembered, was that he believed in magic. Not in the so-called magic of candles, pentagrams, and bat wings. Not in the kitchen enchantments of Slavic grandmothers with their herbiaries and parings from the little toe of a blind virgin tied up in a goatskin bag. Not […]
During the last six months, my labor has been a scarce commodity in our vegetable garden. I’ve been working on the house full time, volunteering weekly at Tule Fog Farm, and using my weekends to read, write and rest my body. All this left little time for maintaining our recently expanded garden. Ma assumed the […]
“Freedom was a debt that could be repaid only by purchasing the freedom of others.” ––The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon, pg. 131 “For centuries the writ of empiricism has been spreading into the ancient domain of transcendental belief, slowly at the start but quickening in the scientific age. The […]
“‘To all those who toil in the bonds of slavery and, uh, the, the shackles of oppression, he offers the hope of liberation and the promise of freedom!’ His delivery grew more assured now. ‘Armed with superb physical and mental training, a crack team of assistants, and ancient wisdom, he roams the globe, performing amazing […]
“Kornblum told them that his time with Josef had come to an end. He had never had so naturally gifted a student, but his own discipline––which was really an escape artist’s sole possession––had not been passed along. He didn’t tell them what he now privately believed: that Josef was one of those unfortunate boys who […]
“‘I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where––wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be the way guys yell when they’re mad an’––I’ll be in the way kids laugh […]
It’s been ten years since I first read The Grapes of Wrath, and I now realize that my seventeen-year-old self was incapable of internalizing even a fraction of the tragedy and grace contained in this overwhelming story. A decade on, what was once fodder for my sophomoric literary intellect has recast itself as a narrative […]
“The brain constantly searches for meaning, for connections between objects and qualities that cross-cut the senses and provide information about external existence. We penetrate that world through the constraining portals of the epigenetic rules. As shown in the elementary cases of paralanguage and color vocabulary, culture has risen from the genes and forever bears their […]