writing and translation
a set of institutions, a set of objects, a judgement of quality, a level of skill?
The title refers to the theory “Ontogeny Repeats Phylogeny”, credited to the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Since Stephen Jay Gould’s detailed investigation of it in 1977, it has some standing as a framework for...
All writers read, of course. I’ve always assumed that they read often, steadily, efficiently, and with pleasure. But on reflection, I wonder. Is it necessarily the case? Do they read more, or differently from...
A few days ago I googled “housekeeping,” probably hoping to find something interesting or meaningful about my own old, dull resistance to basic maintenance, that is, washing, dusting, sweeping, repairing — the details need...
It’s heartening to know that the celebrated translator Lydia Davis is open, in fact enthusiastic and curious about new, or inventive moves between levels and contexts and forms of language. She has taken a...
In addition to being a marketable skill on LinkedIn, writing is — or was — an awe-inspiring technology, representing a power to make language go beyond one person’s limits in terms of time, space...
Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. If you’re reading Robinson’s essays, you probably have already read her novels. You may well approach the essays as I did,...