Go ahead and let this passage from a wonderful piece on Galileo by Adam Gropnik in The New Yorker blow your mind. What would Shakespeare’s Galileo have been, one wonders, had he ever written him? Well, in a sense, he had written him, as Falstaff, the man of appetite and wit who sees through the …
Tag Archive: shakespeare
Feb 07 2012
Reading is Self-Mastery
D.G. Myers positions reading not as an escape but as a challenge to ourselves: To read an author is to read someone different from ourselves. Reading is not a means of self-affirmation, but of self-denial. Any book that is any good challenges its readers: This is so, isn’t it? Did you know this? Have you considered that? [ … …
May 09 2011
Hume and the Panhandler: The Chief Triumph of Art and Philosophy
I am directed to a quote of David Hume’s, whose 300th birthday is this week, from Robert Zaretsky in the New York Times, which for me sums up beautifully my best hopes for art, theatre, literature, and deep, considered thought. Though Hume himself (at length) expresses his “doubts” about their overall power, he still nails it: Here then …
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