fieldus

From a review Graham Swift’s memoir, Making An Elephant:
But probably the most affecting essay is his recollection of fishing adventures with Ted Hughes, who showed him some of his favorite stretches of river in Devon. Swift recounts that “once, when I said goodbye to him to come back to London and made that glib and [...]

David Ulin - the LA Times book editor writes about information overload:
Contemplation is not only possible but necessary, especially in light of all the overload. In her recent essay collection “The Winter Sun” (Graywolf: 196 pp., $15 paper), Fanny Howe quotes Simone Weil: “One must believe in the reality of time. Otherwise one is just [...]

Found this from GK Chesterton after searching for essays on Great Expectations (of which, more to follow).

Nothing is important except the fate of the soul; and literature is only
redeemed from an utter triviality, surpassing that of naughts and crosses,
by the fact that it describes not the world around us, or the things on the
retina of [...]

From The American Spectator
Having shaken off their shackles and discovered that they have not obtained contentment, human beings have a lamentable tendency to believe that they are victims of some alien force, be it aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the priesthood, or simply the belief in God. And the feeling arises that they need only destroy [...]

New Year prediction | clivejames.com
We’ve reached a turning point. A madness has gone out of fashion: the madness of behaving as if only too much can be enough. There will always be another madness, but not that one. From now on a man will have to be as dumb as a petrodollar potentate to think [...]

This Space: April 2007
Norman Mailer reflecting on The Castle in the Forest on KCRW’s snug in the cosmopolis Bookworm.
Perhaps I see it as a metaphor for the dilemma of all men: necessity whose bars we look through and try not to see. Social injustice, apathy, ignorance. The personal prison of entrapment [...]

The visionaries: Meet the men who predicted the crash - Profiles, People - The Independent
…I say listen to negative rather than positive advice. When you go to a book store there are plenty of publications telling you how to get rich, but none telling you how not to go bankrupt. To put it another way, [...]

from a review of of Judith Thurmans’ New Yorker essay on Leni Riefenstahl:
Time, that is intolerant
of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week,
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons [...]

Oliver Burkeman on stimulating the intellect | Life and style | The Guardian
But there’s another barrier to iconoclastic thinking: fear. Once you’ve jolted your brain on to a new path of thought, pursuing it further - either in your head or by acting on it - will stimulate the fear of uncertainty, failure or disapproval. [...]

Ken Baldwin, (c) Chronicle / Christina Koci Hernandez

Discussion of Baldwin, the bridge and the causes of suicide in The San Francisco Chronicle.