Prefatory Note: This essay constitutes a new experiment for words&dirt. I’ve recently been inspired by some of my readers, as well as an excellent interview with Maria Popova, to write a reflection on my last year of reading. Many book enthusiasts use the New Year as an opportunity to create “Best Of” lists, but I’ve […]
“A line comes back to Marie-Laure from Jules Verne: Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” ––All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, pg. 328 “The rise of a popular press and […]
“‘Sublimity,’ Hauptmann says, panting, ‘you know what that is Pfennig?’ He is tipsy, animated, almost prattling. Never has Werner seen him like this. ‘It’s the instant when one thing is about to become something else. Day to night, caterpillar to butterfly. Fawn to doe. Experiment to result. Boy to man.’” ––All the Light We Cannot […]
Joseph J. Romm’s Language Intelligence gives a brief survey of Western rhetoric, tossing classic figures like Jesus and Shakespeare together with contemporaries like George W. Bush and Lady Gaga. The book is designed to help writers “become more persuasive, more memorable, and harder to manipulate” (vii). While I think Romm achieves this to an extent, […]
Bernie Sanders’s bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination has been an inspiration to progressives across America. As the only genuine alternative to the pseudo-liberal policies of Hillary Clinton, Bernie speaks openly about the scourge of socioeconomic inequality, big money’s influence in politics, the threat of climate change, the excesses of Wall Street, corporate oligarchy, racial […]
“I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life.” ––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 486 “‘When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need […]
“BLOOM: (In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he […]
“Sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we.” ––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 387 “The fight for a national health care system today is not basically different than the struggle for universal public education that took place in this […]
“It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast […]
“Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can.” ––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 241 “Bottom line. […]