There are screen zombies everywhere. What to do? Goldstein, Rebecca. Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. Pantheon Books, Random House, New York (435pp. $29.95) Students of philosophy certainly know the old chestnut that “all of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes…
“We’ve been speaking in the bibliography of distraction and focus–And the sorrows of the digital age…” Rosen, Larry D. iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012 (256pp.$25) No matter where we go—to a restaurant,…
The sorrows of the digital age include—distraction, lack of focus, continual serial partial attention and the loss of individuality. All of this is, for me, bound up with reading and spirituality. Here’s what I’ve been following lately on this subject. Distraction, Attention, Technology and Individuality:…
Doctorow, E.L., Andrew’s Brain. Random House, New York, 2014 (200pp. $26) (E.L. Doctorow, one of America’s greatest writers, died recently. Here is a review of one of his last books) The bedrock of fiction is social reality. Mostly we readers expect fictional characters to resemble…
Doctorow, E.L. All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories, Random House, New York, 2011 (277pp.$26) (E.L. Doctorow, one of our great American writers, died recently. In his honor, here is a review of one of his books.) A great short story is…
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…
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…
I seem, after half a lifetime, to have made no progress, unless resignation is progress. John Cheever Journals 1952
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…
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…