On the new acquisitions shelf of the college library I find a little book that almost gets lost among its bigger, bulkier companions — “A Modest Proposal: A Plan for the Golden Years,” by Régis Debray.
Articles with Literature
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For the love of books
In the first year of my married life, I visited with my wife, a teacher, the home of one of her students in Los Angeles, California.
The Brontë Sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte, painted by their brother Branwell (c. 1834)
Vile bodies, immortal souls
On the 29th of December, 1836, Charlotte Brontë, twenty years old, posted some of her poems to the Poet Laureate of England Robert Southey, hoping for encouragement. Three months later, the great man replied, putting the “flighty” girl in her place.
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They don’t know neither do I so there you are
In his 1977 book The First Three Minutes, big-bang physicist Steven Weinberg famously concluded: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
Walden Pond • Photo by Pablo Sanchez Martin (CC BY 2.0)
The little green book
In 1992, Shambhala Publications issued an abridged edition of Thoreau’s Walden in their Pocket Classics series.
The Prime Meridian at Greenwich • Photo by Kris Arnold (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Walking the line
In the fall of 2003, I walked the prime meridian — the line of zero longitude — across southeastern England.
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A sense of place: a conversation
It would be hard to find two writers more different than Eudora Welty and Edward Abbey.
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A hinge of history
In two week’s time [in 2006] I will be in Istanbul, on my way to view a total solar eclipse. It will be my second visit to that great city, and my second TSE.
Detail from "Très Riches Heures" (c. 1412)
Kristin Lavransdatter
For the past few weeks I have lived in 14th-century Norway, sharing the life of Kristin Lavransdatter, the eponymous heroine of Sigrid Undset’s Nobel-prizewinning, 1200-page saga.
Urnes Stave Church • Photo by John Marx (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Of saints and sinners
A week or so ago I tried to articulate something of my religious faith in a blog post called Credo. I listed some of the authors within the Roman Catholic tradition who had influenced my spiritual evolution. Among them was the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset.