From Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Message,” which I just finished:
Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it.
ideas
“The Zone of Interest” was an astonishing film. How it shows what it chooses to show; the sounds we hear of what it chooses not to show — it’s just an incredible work of art made with deep sensitivity by everyone involved. If you’ve already seen it, I recommend this Vanity Fair interview with writer/director Jonathan Glazer and director of photography Łukasz Żal. It’s streaming on MAX. Plan to rewatch soon.
Toni Morrison, in a 1975 lecture, quoted by Ketanji Brown Jackson in her new memoir, “Lovely One”, which I’m reading now:
The function, the very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped property so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
Tina Brown: “America needs editing.”
Sunday, June 2, 2024
What pure pleasure this book was to read: The Vanity Fair Dairies: 1983 - 1992 by Tina Brown. I love on-the-job memoirs/journals, especially anything rooted in the editorial world. The entries are zippy, yet considered — a decade of moments jotted down after whirlwind days. Brown’s a sharp observer …Year in Review: 2023
Saturday, December 30, 2023
Continuing a 23-year tradition of rounding up cultural highlights from the past 12 months, here’s a recap for 2023: 15 Books I Especially Loved This Year An Additional Batch I Enjoyed (That first hard-to-ID book is “Pentagram: Living By Design," which I had to scramble to procure …
I feel behind not having heard of the Gartner Hype Cycle, which charts the rise, fall, and settling-in adoption of emerging technologies. One of the hosts of the “People vs. Algorithms” podcast referred to it in a recent conversation about ChatGPT. Seems apt. We might be getting closer to the trough of disillusionment.
Thought-provoking piece by Ted Chiang: “Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?”
We modern-day humans tend to exaggerate our differences. The results of such exaggerations are often catastrophic.
— From “The Dawn of Everything,” by David Graeber and David Wengrow
“A Tweet Before Dying”: Paul Ford, perceptive and funny and deep yet again, writing in Wired. Here he is on stepping away from his social stream to dive into curious PDFs unearthed from decades past:
But the seeking is important, too; people should explore, not simply feed.
Toni Morrison's Exquisite Nonfiction
Friday, March 6, 2020
I just finished Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (2019), and every few pages or so, I thought to myself: it’s rare I’m taking in prose this rhythmically perfect, this deeply intelligent. From “Peril” (2008): How bleak, unlivable, insufferable …George Packer on Richard Holbrooke
Monday, May 13, 2019
Packer’s recent cover story for The Atlantic — “Elegy for the American Century” — is an exceptional piece of longform reporting and vivid narration. Excerpted from his new book, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.Teju Cole on Embedding Hesitation
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Really enjoyed this substantive recent conversation on Krista Tippett’s “On Being” podcast. At one point, Tippett quotes Cole’s Blind Spot, one of my favorite books from the last few years: “To look is to see only a fraction of what one is looking at. Even in the most vigilant eye, there is a blind …“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”
Hadn’t seen this Camus quote before. (It appropriately closed a new profile on Sam Mendes in TNY.)
Aleksandar Hemon on “Katastrofa”: A superb and insightful essay on language and family.
Enjoyed this short essay by Elif Batuman: “How to Be a Stoic."
Alan Burdick on Time
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
From "The Secret Life of Time," published in The New Yorker: Years ago, long before I had children or was even married, a friend with children said, “The thing about having kids is that after a while you forget what it was like before you had them.” The idea was shocking. Busy enough with my own …James Wood: “Lessons From My Mother”
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Lovely essay.The Refugee Nation
Sunday, August 14, 2016
The official flag for The Refugee Nation, a team of ten refugees currently competing in the Rio Olympics, draws its colour scheme and design from lifejackets. Designed by Syrian artist and refugee Yara Said, the flag is a vivid orange with a single black stripe. Learn more about this beautiful …Tadao Ando: The Idea of a Center
Sunday, August 14, 2016
From Michael Auping’s Seven Interviews with Tadao Ando: The idea of a center is an interesting one, and one that is more of a Western concept. Roland Barthes made a comment on visiting Japan that it is a country that doesn’t seem to have a center; great depth, but no center. I think I …Silverblatt & Knausgaard
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Having just finished book three of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (I enjoyed the first two more, though this volume’s still captivating), I was eager to listen to both part one and part two of the author’s interviews on Michael Silverblatt’s “Bookworm.” It’s great listening. These insights from …Adam Gopnik: "Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith"
Friday, December 4, 2015
Terrific “On Being” conversation."Unfollow" — Conversion Via Twitter
Friday, November 27, 2015
Incredible story."On Becoming a Father"
Friday, September 6, 2013
A lovely short essay by Alexis C. Madrigal.Kevin Ashton: "Creative People Say No"
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Enjoyed this piece, especially Ashton’s quoting of composer George Ligeti's secretary, writing to a requester of some kind: He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not …"The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent"
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Interesting historical perspective from Chrystia Freeland, writing in the Times: The story of Venice’s rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” as an illustration of their thesis that …@KimKierkegaard
Sunday, July 22, 2012
KimKierkegaardashian: The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard mashed with the tweets and observations of Kim Kardashian. Genius."Not His Riches, But Ours"
Sunday, May 13, 2012
A member of the Wallace-L listserv posted this Pascal quote this morning, commenting (insightfully) on how it brings to mind many statements DFW made about reading and indeed love: When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was …[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R1Eb92HfbQ?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
Great new addition to YouTube: William Gass reads from The Tunnel and discusses literature and philosophy. Recorded at The Village Voice Bookshop in Paris, February 6, 2007 (by Villagevoice75).
Skepticism in Montaigne's Day
Sunday, April 8, 2012
A surprising and interesting passage from Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, which I’m reading now: There was only one exception to [Montaigne’s] “question everything” rule: he was careful to state that he considered his …"Tony Judt: A Final Victory"
Thursday, March 8, 2012
By Jennifer Homans, Judt’s widow, and published in The New York Review of Books. Lovely and sad.