Lauren Groff was nervous about writing a novel set two thousand and ten years ago. This, I get. Even the prospect of writing a book set before smartphones feels daunting: so many details to reconstruct, an entire lifeworld that functioned in a radically different way. Lovely…
Header from the group’s Facebook page Think of how frantic you would be if you discovered your child had swallowed part of a mushroom they found at the playground. Or what if you caught your cat eating a new houseplant, or your dog ran through a bed of…
Humans are analog, Hassan suggests. We were formed by the technology we created, the tools we drew from nature in order to extend our bodies and our brains. For millennia, we have connected to, and found meaning in, a material world.
I take no joy in the fact that I sweat like a racehorse who just came in second. The analogy is yet another measure of my neurosis, because I can still hear my grandmother murmuring, “Horses sweat, dear. Men perspire, and ladies glow.” I could light up the Dark Ages.
The attack on Dave Chappelle demonstrates that taboo-slaying is a bit more complicated process in this country than some might think, and who is on whose side might be murkier than some had hoped.
Typesetting machines, courtesy Printhusiast, CC 4.0 Some technologies seem to be more aggressive than others in changing their times. Automatic transmissions, for instance, are ubiquitous but fairly inconsequential; they did not significantly change the experience of driving, and I can still choose to drive a stick if I…
To think that fast on your feet, you have to be loose, willing to take a risk, willing to keep going if you fail. In the end, it is less dangerous than trying to dot every i, anticipate every objection, please every critic.
Photo by John Griswold Yesterday was national Independent Bookstore Day, which the Boston Globe says was first “put on by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association” in 2014. I did not know there was such a promotional event until it was over, but anything that helps preserve…
“Elegance” takes a little time. The word is rooted in the Latin eligio, which means picking out, selecting, editing.
Early Christians were terribly worried about cannibals. Not because the practice was nauseating or sinful, but because if a cannibal kept it up, soon his body would be composed almost entirely of matter that once belonged to another human being. So what would happen when it came time to resurrect everybody’s body?