“The world of letters: does such a thing still exist? Even within the seemingly homogeneous sphere of the university English department, a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing.”
Tag: 09.10
How Our Sense Of Memorials Is Changing
“We’ve stopped putting great men on pedestals and started commemorating their victims. In the process we are are losing a sense that human history involved leadership and struggle and, yes, sacrifice.”
Our Fascination With Doomsday Scenarios
“Some researchers think that apocalyptic dread feeds off our collective anxiety about events that lie outside our individual control. … The desire to treat terrible events as the harbinger of the end of civilization itself also has roots in another human trait: vanity.” (Additional discussion on public radio’s The Takeaway.)