There are some days when only a very old poem will do. Sometimes a 2600-year-old poem. Here are a few selections from the Tao Te Ching, apropos of a hard day at work. — Levi
… Read the restChapter 43
The softest things of the world
Override the hardest things of the
The past week was a rough ride on the literary Internet. Thursday brought the sudden death knell of HTMLGiant, a rollicking community website frequented by writers like Tao Lin, Zachary German, Megan Boyle, Noah Cicero, Marie Calloway and Blake Butler along with a wide cast of erratic contributors and … Read the rest
I moved to northern Virginia in 2009. There were a few good surprises down here for this lifelong New Yorker, like the easy proximity of the thrilling Shenandoah mountains and rivers, and the rich, stark beauty of several Civil War battlefield parks that dot the region in a wide arc … Read the rest
In one remarkable moment in The Last Illusion
I recently heard about a British Library project to reassemble and digitize a 17th century illustrated edition of the Ramayana, a classical Hindu epic. This sounds pretty cool, and it reminded me of a different edition of the Ramayana that I once owned myself.
This was just a cheap … Read the rest
It’s time to start putting some puzzle pieces together.
Five weekends ago I began a project by suggesting that we try to analyze some tough ethical/historical problems with the methodology of a puzzle-solver, by which I meant that we would determine a few principles or “tools” and then apply … Read the rest
It’s because I respect musicians who bravely venture into the dark literary territory of autobiography that I am so fascinated by musical memoirs. It’s also why I’m sometimes critical of them. I have high standards regarding what a good memoir should be.
My standards are high but simple. An … Read the rest
A surprising news bulletin made the rounds this week: “Incredible Discovery Reveals Birthplace of Buddha“. They did what? The story appears to be credible, though many Westerners like me who feel the significance aren’t quite sure how to react. Shouldn’t a discovery this momentous be bigger news? … Read the rest
Funny thing: it was only when I began writing about ethical philosophy here on Litkicks that I began writing seriously about history. The two disciplines might not seem to have much in common, but to me they feel intertwined.
Maybe that’s because our popular conceptions of both ethics and … Read the rest
