It is not that I would mind going down in history as an inconsequential writer; it is that I would mind most bitterly going down as a writer who wasted his gifts in drunkenness, sloth, anger, and petulance. I am no longer dealing with the…
Crawford, Matthew B. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming and Individual in an Age of Distraction, Farrar Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015 (305pp.$26) “distracted from distraction by distraction…” “Burnt Norton” T.S. Eliot Distraction and worry are the default modes of human consciousness,…
The most wonderful thing about life seems to be that we hardly tap our potential for self-destruction. We may desire it, it may be what we dream of, but we are dissuaded by a beam of light, a change in the wind. John Cheever…
Hackman, William. Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties, Other Press, New York, 2015 (308pp.$27.95) A forty thousand year continuum separates the Cro-Magnon shaman painting ochre-and-earth pigment aurochs on the walls of Lascaux cave from the billionaire collector purchasing a mediocre…
I seem, after half a lifetime, to have made no progress, unless resignation is progress. John Cheever Journals 1952
Gimlette, John. Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge, Alfred A.Knopf, New York, 2012 (358pp.$28.95) The ungodly thrills and horrors of the wild coast—a stretch of 900 miles between the mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon rivers in South America, first came to…
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and…
Brands, H.W. The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, Doubleday, New York, 2012 (736pp.$35) General Grant, for a long time, was the lone northern officer who understood and accepted the dire consequences of modern, industrialized warfare, among which were hundreds…
The spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout…The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, maladministration, and the judiciary is tainted…The…
Alperovitz, Gar. What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Vt. 2013 (205pp. $27.95) Crouch, Colin. Making Capitalism Fit for Society, Polity Press, Malden, Massachusetts, 2013 (192pp.) Something terrible is happening to our country and its…