A collection of 280 posts
In our hyper-mediated, panoptical culture, where neurotic self-reference is now almost completely inescapable, the continuing contribution of imaginative fiction and investigative journalism has never been more necessary.
Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker “Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases…” Read more at Amazon. The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt “The generation now coming of age has been taught three
The key term Stendhal introduces, which is central to his vision of romance, is (to use the Americanized spelling) “crystallization”
It is in such trancelike states that Murakami’s characters are drawn into the lands of the surreal and the absurd.
Houellebecq has grave doubts about the net effect of the sexual revolution on human well-being.
They witnessed the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the siege of Vienna, ending a thousand years of implacable Islamic expansion.
Mark Lilla has written a book asserting that liberals should be more committed democrats.
Samer’s book is a story of ordinary life interrupted, and of bravery and endurance in the face of abject terror.
Kill All Normies is merely a good start in need of deeper research, broader connections, clearer argumentation, and a great deal of editing.
Despite his worldwide reputation as the creator of nightmare futures, many people are unaware of Burgess’s credentials as an outspoken opponent of literary censorship.
The Tate Britain shop is large and there are multiple, unimpeachable shelves of books grouped into themes such as technique, art history.
Sadie insisted, apropos of nothing, that she was “really a radical feminist.”
All the European powers combined didn’t manage to kill that many people throughout all Asia during their entire colonial histories.
“Let’s not have any political correctness here. If characters can’t think and talk like people—if writers can’t—then what’s the point of literature?”
What it does do – and why it deserves to be widely read – is raise a mass of awkward questions about religion, race, sex, and identity.