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The Power of the Common Soul
… common soul.” Hope is one of the great themes of Ives’s music: a celebration of the past, not as a place to return to, or to feel nostalgia for, but as inspiration for the future, with the struggles, triumphs, and endurance of previous generations serving as guides to the forward progress of humankind. In …
Read MoreWriter on Board
… author, rather than trying to meet the locals, watches them from a distance—or, as David Foster Wallace once did, retreats to his cabin in horror. A feeling of loneliness and/or separateness sets in—the result of a congenital aversion to conga lines, or sometimes simply other people—and produces a bout of introspection …
Read MoreGuillermo
… by exercise.
“Use it or lose it,” I chimed in, thinking of all the people I knew intent on exercising every day just to keep on their feet.
“If you love the car,” he continued, “you must drive it hard.”
“I hope you don’t use that philosophy with your wife!”
He smiled and said …
Moondance
… on the edge of twilight, Amy tussles with her sheepdog, who is restless without any herding tasks to perform. I cannot sit still, either. I tap my feet, watch for vultures that might rejoin our party. But in time, a strange thing happens—as darkness rises, our attention tightens. We focus on a single blossom …
Read MoreGround Truth
… cotton crop in, Delta planters could feel control slipping from their grasp. The previous year, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled “separate but equal” schooling unconstitutional, and Black Mississippians understandably demanded that the state integrate its schools. They were also beginning to demand voting rights. What might they demand next? An actual living …
Read MoreInsisting on the Positive
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder; Crown, 368 pp., $32
Intellectuals, like baseball players, don’t handle every position well. The philosopher tries to write an Umberto Eco novel, but drops the ball. The psychologist decides she’s also a poet, but strikes out. Add the historian who transitions into a philosopher-memoirist. If one admires …
A Stranger in the Seven Hills
… who ensured its immemorial mix of cultures, languages, and religions. Alexandrians with Greek, Italian, English, Maltese, French, Jewish, and Armenian connections, identified broadly as “European” and “Western,” fled increasingly restrictive educational and economic policies—some with foresight, and others, like the Acimans, only after their situation had deteriorated beyond repair. By the time the 15 …
Read MoreMortal Coils
… false assumption that humans alone possess thoughts, feelings, and intrinsic value. Monsó points out that now “there is a huge and growing quantity of studies in comparative psychology that show that many nonhuman species are capable of making inferences, remembering the past, anticipating the future, planning, innovating, adapting to changing circumstances, and many other …
Read MoreSilent Partner
… vie de bohème that ended sadly when scrofula took the life of her younger son, Hervey. With her two remaining children, Belle and Lloyd, the shattered mother fled 40 miles south to the artist colony of Grez-sur-Loing, famous for being the residence of John Singer Sargent.
There she met Stevenson. The only son …
The Art of Falling
… Motion is a writer noted for clarity and elegance. But his style in “Gravity Archives” is rougher than usual, his syntax expressively off-kilter. That keeps the feeling raw and immediate and gives the impression of poetry in search of its proper form, although each of these poems is artfully shaped according to the same …
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