I’m behind on everything around here, even linking to my New York Times Magazine mini-columns. Recently I’ve written about: plans to turn the old Miami Herald building into a casino; Laurie Anderson’s stint as Andy Kaufman’s sidekick; the (partial) realization of Ray Bradbury’s dream of robot teachers; and, courtesy of Madeline Miller and Plato, The Iliad as love story . . .
“I’ve always written. I’m from an older generation of programmers [who] did not come out of engineering. [A]ll sorts of people were drawn in from the social sciences and humanities.” — Ellen Ullman
I’m still obsessed with the life and writings of Bertrand Russell, and I keep meaning to post the passage from his autobiography that inspired one of my recent New York Times Magazine microcolumns, on Victorians’ belief that fruit was bad for children. Here it is: I remember an occasion at lunch when all the plates were changed and everybody except . . .
“I remember her art as a talisman against disintegration.” Caleb Crain on pronoun trouble and Elizabeth Bishop’s paintings.