Arts and Sciences

It’s not just World of Warcraft, says Clive Thompson.  It’s science in action …
Dangerous sentimentality (is there any other kind?): James Panero visits the Hudson River School for Landscape.
It’s time for awkward questions.  Click here and read Ellen Meiksins Wood’s totally brilliant review of Quentin Skinner on Thomas Hobbes.
“Not seeing a hollow face as hollow:” [...]

One Quite Scarlet

The earliest known existing letter written by Oscar Wilde, dated September 15, 1868, thanking his mother for a new hamper.

James McWilliams of Southwest Texas State University found it by accident at a dinner party, stuck inside a copy of Historiae Romanae that he happened upon at a friend’s home in Houston.  Apologies for the poor [...]

Apprehensions

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mark Bauerlein has been generating controversy with a book and blog post arguing that the digital age is negatively affecting the way that young Americans apprehend information, diminishing the slow, deliberative and deep reading required for effective education.  As a result, we today confront the problem of educating the [...]

The Pause That Refreshes The Blog

Hey, it’s not every day that you get to use the word “persiflage” successfully.  Give Robert Hughes a rubber cigar.
Mary Beard, classics scholar extraordinaire, gets invited to the Emmy’s. No kidding!  Avid readers want to know: who did she wear?
“It is only about relationship and not about any identifiable relata:” Tim Parks on [...]

Challenges

What should a writer notice; what can a critic contend?  Sam Tanenhaus pits Updike against James Wood, which gets Wyatt Mason thinking: “as a form of argumentation, literary criticism is charged with making defensible cases for indefensible positions …”
Okay, I like a good mean joke. All the same, it’s pretty dark to pick on community [...]

Are You Experienced?

A few months ago I looked at terms like “pushback,” “ties” and “misspoke,” proposing ways that these colorful words could be used more responsibly in election commentary.  Now that the endgame is approaching, I thought I’d start an occasional series in a similar spirit, showing how a few keywords are structuring arguments, hoping to highlight [...]