The Plashing Vole (Free subscription) | yesterday
I meant to post this essay on essays by Zadie Smith a couple of weeks ago, to give a sense of perspective to my students slaving over essays - particularly the first-years who may not quite see the point. Essays are creative works: they draw your attention to, then trace the development of, interesting features of texts, ones which people may not have noticed. Meaning, we say, is created in the space...
Ask Nicola (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Zadie Smith talks about the essay in the Guardian : For Samuel Johnson in 1755 it is: "A loose sally of the mind; an irregular undigested piece; not a regularly and orderly composition." And if this looks to us like one of Johnson's lexical eccentricities, we're chastened to find Joseph Addison, of all people, in agreement ("The wildness of these compositions that go by the name of essays")...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Suffering from 'novel nausea', Zadie Smith wonders if the essay lives up to its promise Why do novelists write essays? Most publishers would rather have a novel. Bookshops don't know where to put them. It's a rare reader who seeks them out with any sense of urgency. Still, in recent months Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Drabble, Chinua Achebe and Michael Chabon, among others, have published essays,...
Authentik Beauty Magazine (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
Personal Insurance Quotes and Flowers You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow. – Anon. Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy; you must have somebody to divide it with. --Mark Twain Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings. –Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to...
Past Imperfect (Free subscription) | 09/16/2009
‘Aint it the truth? It is better to waste one’s youth than to do nothing with it at all. George Berkeley It is easier to be wise on behalf of others than to be so for ourselves . La Rochefoucauld Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. John F Kennedy There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it. Mark Twain To understand all is...
Neamhspleach (Free subscription) | 08/25/2009
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.” -Joseph Addison I've gotten nailed in another meme . This one is also about books. Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first...
Just Jake (Free subscription) | 07/16/2009
“Mark Twain: Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter.” By James Caron (University of Missouri Press, 412 pp., 2008). This is a book for Mark Twain scholars and specialists, not for Twain lovers. It is thoroughly researched and footnoted. Caron’s knowledge of Twain is vast and intimate. But the comic genius of Samuel Clemens must be enjoyed on the pages of Twain’s works, not written...
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