There must be some sort of writer’s law out there that captures the sensation I am about to describe: as your book approaches the finish line, and as the final proofreadings, corrections, indexing queries, and debates about jacket and cover compositions pile up, the author’s nausea at the sight of his former ‘dearly beloved’ increasesContinue reading “The Burdens of Proofreading and Copy-Editing”
Category Archives: Books
The Never-Ending Angst Over the Nobel Prize In Literature
Ian Crouch asks why more Americans don’t win the Nobel Prize for Literature. (The last one to do so was Toni Morrison in 1993, an award I remember especially clearly because a) I had only recently started reading her and b) I was struck by the fact of an African-American woman writer being so recognized.)Continue reading “The Never-Ending Angst Over the Nobel Prize In Literature”
Dawn Powell on ‘Writers of Consequence’
Dawn Powell‘s A Time To Be Born is chock-a-block with wonderfully acerbic observations: on life, love, politics–you know, the usual stuff–but for my money, most memorably, in these brief passages, on journalism, writers, and writing itself: Every morning Miss Bemel turned in a complete digest of the dinner conversations or chance comments of important officialsContinue reading “Dawn Powell on ‘Writers of Consequence’”
A Small, Yet Beautiful Book Collection (And Its Scholarly Owner)
As an academic, I’m used to seeing large personal book collections in homes and offices. Many of my colleagues and friends–some very accomplished and smart folks–have, rather effortlessly, put mine to shame. This is the story of, in contrast, a small book collection. But a very impressive one, one that revealed its owner to beContinue reading “A Small, Yet Beautiful Book Collection (And Its Scholarly Owner)”
Alina Simone Doesn’t Like The Internet, Her Best Friend
The New York Times periodically publishes blog posts and Op-Eds by defenders of the intellectual property regimes that are a blot on our cultural landscape today; these defenders include what I describe as–for lack of a better term–‘the whining artist.’ This category includes all those who, seemingly stunned by the fact that the political economyContinue reading “Alina Simone Doesn’t Like The Internet, Her Best Friend”
Creationism, Climate Non-Change, And All That
Phillip Kitcher‘s Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (MIT Press, 1982) makes for depressing reading. Not because of any problems with its arguments, style, or content, but rather because, even as you read it, you realize that though the book was published in 1982, essentially the same points–in addition to others that would bolster the scientific standingContinue reading “Creationism, Climate Non-Change, And All That”
‘Prohibited’ and ‘Acceptable’ Weapons and Targets in War
In my last two posts on Syria on these pages–here and here–I’ve tried to express my discomfort at the threat made by the US to launch cruise missile strikes in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. In them, I was trying to make a distinction which I did notContinue reading “‘Prohibited’ and ‘Acceptable’ Weapons and Targets in War”
Susan Sontag on Truth’s ‘Value’
Susan Sontag, in reviewing Simone Weil’s Selected Essays, offers some remarks on the nature and function of truth, and its placement in our schema of intellectual and emotional endeavor. In doing so, she strikes a slightly Nietzschean note: Perhaps there are certain ages which do not need truth as much as they need a deepening ofContinue reading “Susan Sontag on Truth’s ‘Value’”
(Coded) Messages in Bottles
As part of his continuing series on free speech in Asia, Timothy Garton Ash turns his attention to Burma–the land of military juntas and Aung San Suu Kyi–and points us to some deft work to get around its censors’ pen: Thirteen years ago, editors of tiny magazines in dim, cramped offices showed me examples ofContinue reading “(Coded) Messages in Bottles”
Ambition, the ‘Dangerous Vice’ and ‘Compelling Passion’
In reviewing William Casey King‘s Ambition, a History: From Vice to Virtue (‘Wanting More, More, More‘, New York Review of Books, 11 July 2013), David Bromwich writes: Machiavelli thought ambition a dangerous vice…for Machiavelli ambition was also a compelling passion—a large cause of the engrossing changes of fortune that happen because “nature has created men soContinue reading “Ambition, the ‘Dangerous Vice’ and ‘Compelling Passion’”
Samir Chopra 