Anecdotal Evidence

Food seems to have replaced religion and art as a source of consolation and purpose in the lives of many people. I know some who photograph ...

“Ah, pitiful / The twisted memories of an ancient fool / And sweet the silence of a young man dead!” There’s a tendency to romanticize, so...

Thedore Dalrymple has been publishing a series of books with a simple, blog-like premise: he writes about the books he has been reading. Wha...

One is always in danger of being perceived as a fuddy-duddy. Speak admiringly of rhyme in poetry or elegant prose in fiction and risk being ...

One of the unexpected rewards of retirement has been a serious reduction in the number of bores in my life. Universities are infested with p...

One needn’t be a literary populist, jettisoning all critical values, to understand that especially when young we read certain books for the ...

Working in newsrooms for twenty-five years taught me to buffer against distractions. Newsrooms are noisy places – police scanners, televisio...