Currently reading: Dubliners by James Joyce 📚
Chiefly, “The Dead.” Is there a more beautiful story?
Nicholas Dames on literary studies 🔗 📚
What happened to literary studies? If professionalization was the flaw in the construction of the bridge, making it unstable, it turns out there’s a meteor heading for the bridge anyway: the steady diminution of literature’s role in a culture where electronic, networked media is dominant. […] By lowering the barrier to entry, the Internet encouraged an early 21st-century efflorescence of occasional criticism and spontaneous theorizing that fostered vibrant subcultural readerships.
Finished reading: Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 📚
Currently reading: How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg 📚
Current listening: Chris Potter, Got the Keys to the Kingdom. 🎵
Absolutely scorching live set featuring a dream-team of some of my favorite musicians: not just Potter, but also Scott Colley on bass, Marcus Gilmore on drums, and Craig Taborn on piano. Highly recommended!
Currently reading: Night Train by A. L. Snijders; translated by Lydia Davis 📚
Reading stories about Davos attendees’ optimism, I’m reminded of Iain McGilchrist’s insight that our brains’ left hemispheres—the blinkered perspective that dominates our modern world—are blithely optimistic, even in the face of significant disconfirmatory evidence. 🔗
Currently reading: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 📚
Currently reading: Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 📚
Still excellent advice, on the whole, though I’m not sure what Auden would replace “Read The New Yorker” with now.
