The move away from true hands-on scholarship feels truly tragic Lisa Lieberman t was getting toward the end of this recent semester, and I was at a loss. Either one of two things was happening: My freshman-composition students’ writing had gotten mysteriously, miraculously, markedly better over the semester compared with previous ones, or a large minority… Read More AI and the death of student writing
Journalist Maria Ressa named Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk in speech at Hay literary festival in Powys Lucy Knight “Tech bros” such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are “the largest dictators”, Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 for her defence of media freedom, has said. The American-Filipina journalist has spent a number… Read More Social media bosses are ‘the largest dictators’, says Nobel peace prize winner
I am appalled by today’s sensitivities—how easily people take offense. It impels me to be offensive, or at least to ignore the shrinking violets. George Salis: Your latest book is Burma Sahib, a novel about a young Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) in India. What attracted you to this part of Blair’s life? Paul Theroux: A line in… Read More The Grit That Makes the Pearl: An Interview With Paul Theroux
NB: There’s no wonder why lacs of Indian students are migrating to campuses abroad to pursue higher studies (800,000 in 2022 alone). The Headquarters of Truth based in Nagpur have taken over most public universities. At this rate, nothing will be left for Indian teachers to do except praise whatever the RSS considers to be… Read More Professor’s Harassment by ABVP Shows Near-Complete Takeover of Universities by RSS-BJP
From the 1910s through the 1930s, Maximilian J. Rudwin produced some excellent pioneering scholarship on the European traditions of the fantastic in literature, especially as related to various manifestations of the devil. Rudwin was an unusually peripatetic scholar, and virtually nothing has been written about him or his oeuvre. His trail has not been easy to… Read More Manifestations of the Devil: The writings of Maximilian Rudwin (1885-1946)
NB: This is a fascinating account of one of the most deadly confrontations of modern times. I learned from it that Ayatollah Khomeini was less interested in religious orthodoxy than in seizing absolute power and cutting down moderate clerics to size, and used the book to assert his authority; that Rushdie’s assailant Hadi Matar, 26,… Read More Rushdie, Khomeini and Me
The spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord # 136 The monotheistic religions were a compromise between myth and history, between the cyclical time that still governed the sphere of production and the irreversible time that was the theater of conflicts and regroupings among different peoples. The religions that evolved out of Judaism were… Read More Society of the Spectacle
By Morten Høi Jensen – March 25, 2016 IN THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, Thomas Mann’s great novel of 1924, a young man travels to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps intending to visit his tubercular cousin for three weeks but ends up staying seven years. Among many other experiences “up there,” the young Hans Castorp becomes audience to… Read More The Unbearable Pathos of Thomas Mann
Questions, observations, suggestions. The addressees should be able to recognise themselves अहंकार व्यक्ति के अज्ञान और मूर्खता का परिचायक है : गीता (३ / २७) The spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord Good is self-existent, evil is not. It is like a parasite living in and around good. It will die of itself when… Read More Unsolicited thoughts from an elder citizen
The birds they singAt the break of day‘Start again,’ I heard them say‘Don’t dwell on what has passed awayAnd what is yet to be …’ – Leonard Cohen, Anthem +++++++++++ Hour by hour, life is kindly offered usWe have learned but little from yesterdayOf tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,And if I ever feared the coming… Read More The present is our happiness
After the truth-shower 