Posts filed under “Books”
A relief and heartbreak
Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. From Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
So was your PhD like this, too?
Gurus, who, I trust you know, are Indian teachers, expect you to contemplate the acorn ten years at a stretch, and if, in that time, you are no wiser about the nut, you are not very bright, and that may be the only certainty with which you will come away, which is a post-graduate melancholy—for […]
As if she had once owned the earth
The landlady had always been impressed with the ability to pay. When she found a stream of wealth, she followed it to its source and before long, it was not distinguishable from her own. She felt that the money she paid out in taxes returned to all the worthless pockets in the world, that the […]
Stories are good for you
Study: Reading Fiction Makes People Comfortable With Ambiguity. A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist Maja Djikic, report that people who have just read a short story have less need for what psychologists call “cognitive closure.” Compared with peers who have just read an essay, they expressed more comfort with disorder and […]
For they flee the light
Why people pirate
Public confidence vs. efficiency in government
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The Sentry: In those days there were neither telegraphs nor telephones, and in order to transmit the orders of the authorities as expeditiously as possible, the “forty thousand couriers” immortalized by Gogol in his Government Inspector used to gallop head-long in all directions. This, of course, was not as quick […]