The word of the year reflects the zeitgeist, and we have been bullied by social media, dictated to by influencers, terrified by physical and political contagion, until the only obvious place to land was in crazed overreaction. Goblin mode.
When Sandbox VR came looking for writers to experience its new VR games—and one of them had a Star Trek theme—I gulped and said yes, then roped in my husband, who knows Star Trek the way other people know scripture.
Slowly it dawned on me just how hard this splashy, casual medium could be. The way real fun is often harder to find than work or habit, because it has to be spontaneous yet you have to take great pains to prepare for its possibilities.
The morality in Agatha Christie’s books plays no tricks on us. Law and order will prevail. Cozy comfort is impossible without its backdrop.And so, we have Jane Marple: clear-eyed, ruthless in the honesty of her appraisals, with a tart tongue but a warm heart.
We are overstimulated, overavailable, overbusy, and a long, meandering, curled-up-on-the-sofa chat seems an impossible luxury. Funny, how improvements so often subtract from life’s quality.
Brazilians embraced her as their finest modern author, yet. Her writing process was intuitive, soaked in emotion, and “entirely unconscious”; you would never guess she studied law.
The persona was the mask worn by actors in ancient Greece—but its purpose was not to fool the audience about the actor’s identity. The mask’s exaggerated expressions helped define the character, and most important, the mask functioned as a tiny megaphone, making the actor’s voice more audible.
Paul Schoomer did not care whether you came to buy or browse. For nearly thirty years, from 1969 to 1996, Schoomer was the purveyor of fine books in St. Louis. Along with his wife Suzanne, he made Paul’s Books into "Cheers" for bookworms.
Primarily a playwright, Bennett won acclaim for "The History Boys" and "The Madness of George III." That theatrical sense of pacing and dialogue keeps "The Uncommon Reader" sparkling, even (or perhaps especially) during the Queen’s internal monologues.
Novelty is what Americans are said to crave, yet it terrifies policy wonks, CEOs, art dealers, and almost everybody else. This is no time for experiments, we mutter, sharply aware of how precarious profit, amicable coexistence, and life itself are now. It is safer to follow a recipe exactly.