Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what’s fun?
By: Alan Jacobs
October 18, 2013
Thomas Frank is exasperated: What our correspondent also understood, sitting there in his basement bathtub, was that the literature of creativity was a genre of surpassing banality. Every book he read seemed to boast the same shopworn anecdotes and the same canonical heroes. If the authors are presenting themselves as experts on...
October 18, 2013
The original Tour de France had nothing to do with bicycles: it was a medieval guild system which still has a residual existence today: it directed young craftsmen-in-training to travel from place to place in France, practicing their trade and learning the different ways it was done in different parts of the country. The same practice in...
October 16, 2013
Alex Payne recently did what I do, in a less thorough way, from time to time: he re-evaluated his commitment to the Apple ecosystem. It’s a valuable exercise; among other things, it helps me to manage my frustrations with my technological equipment. And frustrations there are — in fact, they have increased in recent years. You...
October 15, 2013
James Joyce, text portrait by Rod McLaren Let me just post without comment — except for taking this moment to express my admiration — this account of people who gathered in a bookstore to read Finnegans Wake aloud: We would gather around in a circle at Alias Books, lock the doors, and read out loud. We met every Sunday @ 11pm, and...
October 14, 2013
A while back I posted on the great spaces-after-a-period controversy and the revelation by one Heraclitus that typographic history is more varied and complicated than certain modern scolds would have you believe. As part of my research on Christian humanism and World War II, I’ve been reading the little book whose cover is pictured...
October 11, 2013
Philip Hensher has a point: Frustration spilled out on Facebook after a University of Cambridge professor of modern German and comparative culture, Andrew Webber, branded the acclaimed literary novelist Philip Hensher priggish and ungracious when the author refused to write an introduction to the academic’s forthcoming guide to...
October 10, 2013
James Joyce’s Ulysses is fascinating in many ways, not least because it has proven such a magnet for controversy of all kinds: it has been at the center of hullabaloos about obscenity law, about textual editing, and — as Robert Spoo’s new book demonstrates — about copyright. I haven’t read Spoo’s book yet, but I want to after...
October 9, 2013
The major project I am currently working on concerns Christian humanism in a time to total war — in particular, in World War II. In the midst of a an unprecedentedly vast war, a number of prominent and highly accomplished intellectuals saw the need for a renewal of a rich and subtle humanism — which is surprising in itself, it seems...
October 8, 2013
Very few people understand how to evaluate analogies properly. An analogy will have explanatory value if the things or experiences or events or ideas likened to one another are indeed alike in the respect called attention to by the analogy. Far too many people think they can deny the validity of an analogy between X and Y by pointing out...
October 7, 2013
I’m not especially excited about the Austen Project: The Austen Project, with bestselling contemporary authors reworking “the divine Jane” for a modern audience, kicks off later this month with the publication of Joanna Trollope’s new Sense & Sensibility, in which Elinor is a sensible architecture student and impulsive...