Homer Inc.
At the beginning of January, in the bookshop of Terminal 2 at San Francisco airport, I looked for a translation of the Iliad – not that I really expected to find one. But there were ten: one succinct W.H.D. Rouse prose translation and one Robert Graves, in prose and song, both in paperback; two blank [...]
Montaigne and the Art of Cooperation
Economic insecurity has rendered our social life brutally simple: ‘us-against-them’ coupled with ‘you-are-on-your-own’. But the French essayist can inspire radical new forms of cooperation. At the end of his life, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) inserted a question into an essay written many years before: “When I am playing with my cat, how do [...]
Inside Intelligence: Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet’ Argues for the Power of Introverts
My neighbor, a leadership development consultant who regularly helps people improve themselves through personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, once told me I was the most introverted person he’d ever met. I took this as a compliment. Who wouldn’t? They and others view their tendency toward solitary activity, quiet reflection and reserve as “a [...]
Tolstoy: A Russian Life
January 23, 2012 by admin
Filed under Books, Courses, Weekend study retreat
There are two principal models for biography in our culture, and perhaps the first decision the biographer has to face is which of the two will best suit the subject in question. First, there is the Boswellian model: the massive tome (or tomes) containing as much material as can be garnered, following the philosophy that [...]
“Be not inhospitable to strangers / Lest they be angels in disguise”: George Whitman, Paris Bookseller and Cultural Beacon, Is Dead at 98
PARIS — George Whitman, the American-born owner of Shakespeare & Company, a fabled English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris and a magnet for writers, poets and tourists for close to 60 years, died on Wednesday in his apartment above the store. He was 98. He had not recovered from a stroke he suffered [...]
Wooing Mr. Wickham
November 28, 2011 by admin
Filed under Books, Instructors, Jane Austen
Inspired by Jane Austen’s heroes and villains, this contemporary short-story anthology has been selected by Michele Roberts from the Jane Austen Short Story Competition 2011 run by Chawton House Library. ‘When a young lady is to be a heroine… Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.’ Or, if she is [...]
Homerathon 2011
The University of Chicago’s Classical Entertainment Society and Court Theatre are hosting the first-ever 24-hour live reading of Homer’s Iliad in “The Homerathon.” The Homerathon will begin on Sunday, November 20 at 10 pm and run for 24 hours until Monday, November 21 at 10 pm. All 24 books of the Iliad will be read [...]
P. D. James Adds Dark Twist to Pride and Prejudice…Murder
October 14, 2011 by admin
Filed under Books, Jane Austen
Set in 1803 at Pemberley, the Darcy family estate, five years after Austen concluded her original story, James’ new novel finds Elizabeth and Darcy happily married, with two fine sons, and enjoying regular visits from Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband Bingley. There is talk about the prospect of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana, lingering [...]
The Stone: ‘Quixote,’ Colbert and the Reality of Fiction
Did Cervantes invent “truthiness”? How the 17th-century master’s multilayered world mirrors the realities and absurdities of our modern age. In his contribution to The Stone last week, Alex Rosenberg posed a defense of naturalism — “the philosophical theory that treats science as our most reliable source of knowledge and scientific method as the most effective [...]
The cold, cold case of Jack the Ripper
It’s been called the world’s most famous cold case, a source of endless fascination and speculation ever since the first mutilated victim was found in a bloody heap 123 years ago on the gas-lighted streets of East London. So why is Scotland Yard suppressing information that some crime buffs think could offer fresh leads on [...]
