Soon there’ll be more foreigners on earth than there are Americans. Foreignness is a planetary condition, and even when you walk through your hometown—whether that’s New York or London or Sydney—half the people around you are speaking in languages and dealing in traditions different from your own. Read the article at Lapham’s Quarterly But there…Continue reading Friday Reads – Pico Iyer on the Pleasures of Being Foreign, Ethan Siegel on Dark Matter
Category: literary essays
I am the Common Reader: Virginia Woolf on pleasure, reading, & the survival of literature
Despite her knowledge of Greek and her voracious reading of the classics, Virginia Woolf considered herself a self-taught reader. As a woman, she had been denied the illustrious Oxford education that the men in her family enjoyed. As it turns out, her lack of affectation, her insistence on taking pleasure in reading, is what makes her…Continue reading I am the Common Reader: Virginia Woolf on pleasure, reading, & the survival of literature
In Praise of Grace Paley
The iconic short story writer and essayist Grace Paley died yesterday at her home in Vermont. I have long been an admirer of her work, and have been such a disciple that my students over the years have probably become bored with the refrain, “If you want to learn how to write dialogue, read Grace…Continue reading In Praise of Grace Paley