“Looking at his close readings, one finds that they are not really close at all, but simple assertions about Eliot’s lines bringing the world ‘indelibly before us’ and being ‘drenched in desire, rapt with repetition’.”
A call to arms from the Independent: Someone please write a decent book about Black Sabbath (yes, really).
“It’s a very clever, very market-driven thought: getting to know the classics without having to read them.”
O give me a home / where the atheists roam…
Nuts n bolts of big versus small, courtesy of Snowbooks; I find myself wondering if that picture came from Cute Overload. Even if it didn’t, this one I am gratuitously linking sure did (more on the Cute Overload phenomenon here).
An addendum to Maud’s post: Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table was recently named the best science book of all time. A profile from The Economist is available here.
“Unlucky in life, few artists in history have been better served after death than Vincent van Gogh.”
Ahahahahahahaha. And relatedly, the 92nd St. Y believes “a lesser known Newton Law is ‘rock-n-roll will never die.'”
I must say, my favorite Arendt is The Life of the Mind, but it doesn’t seem as popular as some of her other things. A shame; her political philosophy is intensely moral, and Arendt links morality and thought as few dare. That being said, this article on Arendt’s well known Eichmann book is certainly interesting for anyone who’s met anyone who careers from career to career.
Latin is useful after all (translation here).