We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. Yet another person's words can reach through the walls — which is why literature matters.
1mo ago
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.
"The man read and read, moving his lips; now and then his whole body started moving and then the words entered him like spirits, and began to work their mischief."
2mo ago
The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
For a start, the Odyssey was the first time a hero in Western culture was celebrated for smarts and cunning—and not just fighting and violence. It was as if Homer had grown up after creating the Iliad (in which 239 characters, identified by name, meet their death), and decided to tell a more civilized tale.
But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
These older books have a sense of integrity. This project was just an opportunity for me to go back to some of my favorite books and look at the ways that's true.
One of my favorite radio programs of all time, where an author (and often a legendary one) is interviewed about their novel by an audience that's recently read it.
4mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.