I began this book on a motive common these days to many—not enough, but many—of my white brethren (speaking, obviously, in a generic, not religious, sense), a hope to own, understand, and confront our personal dose of racism. To that end, the book is a blessing indeed. What I found in addition, though, is myself coming to an opinion about Heather McGhee, a Black American lawyer and scholar, as a writer. And that opinion is this: she is among the…..
Consider the following quotations from the book entitled Beauty (Oxford University Press, 2009) by the prolific English philosopher Roger Scruton. “When, on some wild moor, the sky fills with scudding clouds, the shadows race across the heather, and you hear the curlew’s liquid cry from hilltop to hilltop, the thrill you feel is an endorsement of the things you observe and of you, the observer… A world that makes room for such things makes room for you.” “Works of art…..
I am just underway with editing and co-authoring a book designed for general readers as well as specialists in philosophy, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. Yes, it’s ambitious. My colleagues in the project are: Tom Davis, associate professor of Philosophy at Whitman College; Susan Pickett (my wife), recently retired professor of Music at Whitman College; Mark Brown, a psychotherapist and jazz-folk musician, and Lara Riley, a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist. Here’s the beginning of the Prologue, in the hope that it tempts…..
My daughter, Heather, has published her first novel. It is a story of mystery and adventure for teenage and young adult readers. It is set in renaissance Venice, hence the title. Two girls become pals and decide to serve their city as a duo of detectives by apprehending a … The narrative has a great twist, which of course I must not reveal. And there’s much more. Venice is on display in all its glory—nature and art in cahoots, as…..
“Brain-death” is a problematic term, a topic Robert Truog has treated in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) in three pieces (two with colleagues) in the past two years.[1],[2],[3] His thinking continues to evolve about the term’s limitations and problems, but he has not, to date, given up on it. We have, however.[4] At the least, we suggest that the advantages of doing so be given some thought. “Brain-death,” meaning irreversible coma and apnea, as a new criterion for…..
A sad day for his family, his country, and for the literary world. I think his novel, Miss Jane is a masterpiece. Here’s what I said about it (on Amazon) in September 2019. Do you remember that scene in the movie version of The English Patient where Katherine lists for the sake of archeologists (and supporters of their project, all of them guys) gathered around a fire the several varieties of love? Romantic, filial, etc. Well, this novel, set in the…..
I have mentioned this book in a previous blog (please have a look at it) and now the book is released in paperback: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/story-by-story. I won’t repeat the brief blurb I made about it earlier, but my co-author, philosopher Thomas Alderson Davis, and I are happy about this new form of availability.
Many, I’m willing to bet, who love reading, have found themselves during this time thinking about, rereading, or looking at for a first time some one or more of literary pieces centered on or around an epidemic illness, the quarantine one has produced, or both. Katha Pollitt, for example, took up this theme recently in one of her columns in The Nation. I am no exception. I’ve two personal favorites, each Italian: Allesandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi and Giovanni Boccaccio’s…..
The poem is in The New Yorker, its edition of 16 December 2019. Before encountering this poem, I’d been slow to come around to this poet. This brief work, though, wins me over completely. I’m a first-line guy: if that line doesn’t catch my interest, I’m done. Here’s Wiman’s on this occasion: Three kinds of hair in the brush one love … I’m captured. It’s got gritty diction plus texture, the latter created by a combo of consonantal stops…..
For The Laughing Heart—Revised Mr Johnson has succeeded in producing a thought provoking epic of family, love, baseball, good and evil. The Laughing Heart Revised challenges one to examine what we believe, what we hold sacred and what we profane. I was surprised how thoroughly I enjoyed this examination as this is not always a comfortable exercise. It is a book I am sure to revisit as the layers of evocative prose deserve further reflection.
