Op-ed pages. The news. The latest manufactured outrage. Well-reviewed first-person novels about nothing. All so dreadfully banal and repetitive. This is what results when everything is forged in economies of dollars, of ether, of attention. Most culture now has the feeling of having been ...
A bad guest, Beerbohm writes, is either a parasite or a churl, the latter being someone like the freeloading poet Dante, who “received during his exile much hospitality from many hosts and repaid them by writing how bitter was the bread in their houses, and how steep the stairs were.”...
“English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge”*… Plus ça change. The opening pages of The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, an instructional book of table manners dating from around 1480 and written in Middle English. Among...
Public outcry at the decision reached a fever pitch, and newspapersfilledtheir pageswith editorial indignation. In its first legislative session following the court’s decision and the ensuing outrage, the New York state legislaturemade historyby adopting a narrow “right to privacy,” which prohibit...