November 18, 2013
Of Blogs and Bobbleheads
About ten years ago, a friend offered to buy me a custom-made bobblehead doll for my birthday. The question, then: Who did I want? Whitman seemed too obvious (I have […]
October 31, 2013
The Stars Did What They Do: “Heaven and Earth,” Considered
“Heaven and Earth,” the penultimate poem in Carl Phillips’ Double Shadow, offers up vertigo, suffering, and fear—and all in the first four lines. The poem’s title, perhaps, alludes to the […]
October 28, 2013
Thought and Expression
About ten seconds ago, when I opened up my copy of Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story, a matchbook cover from an Italian restaurant fell out. I don’t recognize the restaurant […]
October 17, 2013
Salter in the House
I’ve never been able to locate a working time machine—which leaves me, tonight, in a worse-than-usual-fix. Because I need to travel back to earlier this evening and exhort anyone within […]
October 16, 2013
Kundera and the Debt Ceiling
This evening, as the House Republicans again failed to offer a bill that would reopen the government and extend the Treasury’s debt limit, I found myself turning to Milan Kundera […]
September 28, 2013
Matter and Antimatter
Twenty-eight years ago, at the University of Wisconsin, I took an introductory course in philosophy. Asked to write about epistemology (as espoused by Descartes, I think, or maybe Bishop Berkeley), […]
September 7, 2013
Banga! Banga! Banga!
Patti Smith plays tonight at Detroit’s Majestic Theatre. I’ll be there, touching base with my three-decades-ago self, that self that used to sing along (badly) to cassette tapes of Horses […]
September 2, 2013
How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!
The magnificent Edward Lear, who described himself as “3 parts crazy—and wholly affectionate,” found his way into the Times’ Arts Beat this past week. The piece begins: “Ever wonder what […]
August 30, 2013
This World: Dig It
All morning, from across the bogs and beyond the whale-road, tributes have been pouring in for Seamus Heaney. It’s a lovely thing to witness: words (by Heaney, by his admirers) […]
August 10, 2013
Kindness and Attention (Part Two)
George Saunders’ year of wonders, which began with a New York Times Magazine cover story and has gone on to include a bestselling book and a much-discussed graduation speech, will […]
August 5, 2013
Kindness and Attention (Part One)
The commencement speech that George Saunders delivered at Syracuse University a few months ago has been making the virtual rounds, and it’s easy to understand why. Saunders warms up the […]
July 26, 2013
Distant Lands, Close Quarters
When I put my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to bed at night, the last thing I tell her is “I love you a lot.” The “a lot” feels crucial—not as an intensifier […]