“A great fire can put out a smaller one by starving it of oxygen and fuel. Now, as he returned the last letter to the packet, he was almost sick with longing for Mrs. Rosa Clay of Van Pelt Street, Midwood, Brooklyn. Sammy had once told him about the capsule that had been buried at […]
This is probably my favorite of the books I’ve read by Edward O. Wilson, although it did not alter my worldview as profoundly as On Human Nature did when I read it back in early 2012. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is an eloquent explication of the ideas and dispositions I hold in highest regard. […]
“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 […]
“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 […]