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Cabbing it with Charles Dickens

My latest New York Times Magazine mini-column is on London’s taxi drivers, who memorize 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks to obtain a license; they emerge from the training with a larger hippocampus. In the smaller city of his day, Charles Dickens also mastered the city’s roads — to avoid being overcharged. But eventually, as he explains in an essay published . . .

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Sightings of the Virgin

“Once the Virgin Mary was released into the world, the world took her and ran in different directions.” Jessa Crispin ponders religious icons.

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Reader burnout

Revisiting the problem of overdosing on beloved writers, or, in Matthew Lickona’s case, filmmakers.

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Finishing no matter what

“I think if somebody has to make an artistic work, he will finish it no matter what. It has nothing to do with the money, with the time.” — Marjane Satrapi

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