Not long ago, when advising some friends who were about to start a garden, I told them to plant a state-of-the-art garden, meaning not a technologically complex one, but rather one in accord with the best knowledge we have of what constitutes excellence in a home garden. This can be expressed on the smallest levels [...]
Lots of reading getting done here. One book I read last week was Jill Jonnes’ Conquering Gotham, about the construction of Penn Station (ugh these titles; can’t we just call it “The Building of Penn Station”?). The book makes a good read for the NYC enthusiast; part of the pleasure is deepening one’s knowledge of [...]
“My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.” – Carl Jung
An old paperback I possess advertises its author thus: “Doctor and scientist, visionary and thinker, Carl Jung ranks with Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud as one of the great minds of the twentieth century.” I [...]
One of my friends, who is bemused by my general policy of abstinence from modern novels, walked me over to the Porter Square Bookshop in Somerville to purchase me a copy of Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill. I read the first page and saw the prose was taut enough for me to give it a try. [...]
MOYERS: So the old story, so long known and transmitted through the generations, isn’t functioning, and we have not yet learned a new one?
CAMPBELL: The story that we have in the West, so far as it is based on the Bible, is based on a view of the universe that belongs to the first millennium [...]
Time spent among people reveals just how difficult it is, even for the most worthy and competent, to be capable of real love and relationship. Developing this capacity is in truth the sole bifocal commandment of the Christian religion, all others being mere ancillae; and it is also the goal of Jung’s school of psychoanalysis, [...]
“Seems, madame? Nay it is; I know not seems.” - Hamlet
Helen Luke is not one of the easier writers to write about. She appeared as a guide in my life when I began to feel the difference between exterior and interior, fact and meaning, appearance and reality. These distinctions are not for everyone nor [...]
It is a remarkable fact that before the 20th Century there were no allusive titles. Titles were simpler then, like “Daniel Defoe” or “David Copperfield.” St. Bernard did not call his commentary on the Song of Songs “The Kiss of His Mouth” and Shakespeare did not call Julius Caesar “Scatter the Proud.” Crime and Punishment [...]
In writing there are only two things, matter and treatment. In Abbott Joseph Liebling’s The Earl of Louisiana we have matter so interesting that it still holds the attention fifty years later in itself, and treatment so virtuosic one is tempted to proclaim Liebling a literary figure rather than a journalist.
As far as matter goes, [...]
There are many things which I have long held at arm’s length because of a general suspicion that I will not like them or profit by them. I have from time to time been reproved by others (and myself) for not having sure and certain knowledge of them. “How can you know you’ll dislike something [...]