Axel’s Castle, a mirror and an encyclopaedia
When I was about fifteen, I found Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle in a library. It was…
Fragments on tradition
Today’s cultures are both disintegrating and proliferating. Any writer has to hand the near infinite profusion…
Regaining time
The other evening, I pulled from the shelf the sixth and last volume of Marcel Proust’s…
Poem: the tethered mind
The tethered mind The mind prowls, tethered to its past. An unknown unknown rises from An…
Elegy
A little under two weeks ago my mother died. I gave the eulogy at her funeral,…
culture / history / literature
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
“This whole city has become a desert.” Ghalib 1861 William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal: the Fall…
Poem: peaches in a bowl
Today, a poem composed on the day of my daughter’s departure to study in Europe for…
A task: from Milosz to me
A short post. The miracle of literature: how words crafted for another voice, at another time,…
Reflections on 2017
The year is drawing to a close, and while it is yet weeks from New Year,…
On revenge
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the…