On Wednesday, I resumed work on a philosophy book project that has been on the back-burner for a while. More precisely, I have not worked on it since July 2012. (The fall semester of 2012 saw me teaching three classes, all of them essentially new preparations, and then, like, a baby was born.) Back inContinue reading “Returning to Writing (And How It Sucks)”
Category Archives: Writing
Writer and Reader, Bound Together
Tim Parks, in the New York Review of Books blog, writes on the always interesting, sometimes vexed relationship between writers and their readers, one made especially interesting by the blogger and his mostly anonymous readers and commentators: As with the editing process…there is the question of an understanding between writer and reader about what kindContinue reading “Writer and Reader, Bound Together”
Reflections on Facebook, Part Three
Facebook statuses are legendary. They have been indicted ad nauseam as archives of exhibitionism, narcissism, boring and pointless navel-gazing, repositories of TMI, and many other sins. But they still repay some attention. The Facebook status typically includes a prompt. The current one is ‘What’s on your mind?’ The one before that was ‘How are youContinue reading “Reflections on Facebook, Part Three”
Reflections on Facebook, Part Two
Facebook’ problematic relationship with privacy issues infuriates most of its users; it has ensured that no contemporary discussion of online privacy can proceed without a Facebook-related example. This has largely been the case because Facebook set out to provide a means of social networking and communication with an architecture designed to induce behavior in itsContinue reading “Reflections on Facebook, Part Two”
Reflections on Facebook, Part One
This post is the first of several posts I intend to write on my Facebook experiences. Like many (very many!) people, I’m a Facebook user. And like many of those people, I have a vexed relationship with it, a fact best demonstrated by my decision to leave Facebook a couple of years ago, close myContinue reading “Reflections on Facebook, Part One”
Professorship and ‘The Perennial Taker of Courses’
In ‘In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks‘ Hortense Calisher writes, Robert was a perennial taker of courses–one of those non-matriculated students of indefinable age and income, some of whom pursued, with monkish zeal and no apparent regard for time, this or that freakishly peripheral research project of their own conception, and others of whom, like Robert,Continue reading “Professorship and ‘The Perennial Taker of Courses’”
O. Henry on the South (Mainly Nashville)
I’ve only read a couple of short stories by O. Henry but have long owned an omnibus collection of them (presented to me on my twenty-eighth birthday). I’ve finally taken a gander at it, and stumbled on his classic A Municipal Report. Henry was a Southerner transplanted to the East Coast, so I find the narrator’s voice–aContinue reading “O. Henry on the South (Mainly Nashville)”
Contra Ed Smith, Plain and Clear Language is Still a Virtue
In the New Statesman Ed Smith pushes back at Orwell‘s classic ‘Politics and the English Language‘: When politicians or corporate front men have to bridge a gap between what they are saying and what they know to be true, their preferred technique is to convey authenticity by speaking with misleading simplicity. The ubiquitous injunction ‘Let’sContinue reading “Contra Ed Smith, Plain and Clear Language is Still a Virtue”
Henry James on the ‘Fatal Cheapness’ of the Historical Novel
Reviewing Colm Tóibín‘s The Master, a ‘novelistic portrait’ of Henry James, Daniel Mendelsohn writes: ”The Master” is not, of course, a novel about just any man, but rather a novel about a figure from the past about whom we know an extraordinarily great deal, through both his own and others’ memoirs, books and letters. As Toibin wellContinue reading “Henry James on the ‘Fatal Cheapness’ of the Historical Novel”
John Donne’s Paradoxes and Problems
A short while ago, I provided, here, excerpts from Aristotle’s Problems; in particular, I quoted two questions that Aristotle raises about alcohol and sex. Then, I wanted to showcase the colorful framing of the question and the answer; the latter was made especially interesting because of the serious spirit of inquiry visible in it, oneContinue reading “John Donne’s Paradoxes and Problems”
Samir Chopra 