J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello
It's exhilarating to find a novel in which such incommensurate world-views as Afrocentrism, veganism, and Catholicism are debated intelligently.
The Everetts and the Pirahã
I just read Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes, a book by Daniel L. Everett about his time with the Pirahã (pronounced pee-da-HAN) tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
InsideStorytime BREAKDOWN
Events, tax day humor, and more.
Vonnegut and the Y-Axis
I guess happy endings aren't an organic feature of the stories ordinary people are driven to tell, but rather a constraint imposed on us by capitalist realism or socialist realism as the case may be?
Series One of Skins
There are TV shows that, if you just watch whatever episode happens to be on the air right now, might strike you as kind of gratuitous -- but if you watch the episodes in sequence and in the right spirit, turn out to have literary depth.
Eisoptrophobia
'Who's that?' she thought, gazing in the mirror at the feverish, scarred face with the strangely glittering eyes looking out at her.
Great Story: “The Country of the Blind” by H.G. Wells
There's always terror at the edge of Wells's vision, linked to his awareness of how much humanity has to lose.
Norman F. Dixon’s On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence is one of my favorite non-fiction books.
Jo Walton’s Farthing
Farthing is a country house murder mystery, set in an alternate time-line where Britain and Nazi Germany have made peace some time after the fall of Dunkirk.
Asserting Our Lack of Connection
"In the act of trying to save the old from destruction, we are asserting our lack of connection to that world."