The Spell of the Sensuous: Book Review
This book seems like “mine,” in a sense few ever turn out to be. That’s because it recognizes the difference between spoken and written language. It’s a subject of very long-term interest to me....
Category: art
a set of institutions, a set of objects, a judgement of quality, a level of skill?
Individual Development Repeats Species Development
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...
What Writers Read
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...
The Housekeeping Gene
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...
Translating and Transposing
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...
The Wonderful Power of Writing
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...