Absence of Mind: Book Review
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,...
Bateson’s Vision of Unity: Review of Biography
Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist. A biography by David Lipset, Boston: Beacon Press, 1982. Gregory Bateson must surely have presented a daunting prospect to his biographer. Lipset takes us on an epic...
Speaking of Matter: Review of Q.E.D.
Feynman, Richard P, Q.E.D.: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Princeton, 1985 I loved many things about this book, but above all the moments when Feynman let own joy, unabashed wonder at the...
Dylan as Listener: Review of The Philosophy of Modern Song
It’s technically a book, of course, but you need to listen to it as much as read it. It’s organised as notes to 66 selected songs — the selection and ordering lying at the...
Heartfield and Photography
The celebrated German photomontage artist John Heartfield (né Helmut Herzfeld, 1891-1968), had an astonishing gift for finding specific photographs and reconfiguring them as news in a world of his invention — a world in...
Borges on Writing [book review]
Like many other Anglophone readers, I assumed for a long time that Borges wrote primarily fiction, which meant that I had been overlooking roughly half of his writing. This book of essays (Jorge Luis Borges...