Sorry for starting on just an esoteric note, but here it is. Derrida said that writing precedes speech as the primary language mode, and of the face of it, this seems silly. We hear our parents coo at us before we can even imagine what a letter is. But in our world of social media [...]
Recently Jennifer Egan said, “We need to write now, write well—tell the truth in all its messy complexity. It’s our best shot at helping to preserve a democracy in which facts still exist and all of us can speak freely.” Readers are necessary for this process, too. We create a world where we examine rhetoric [...]
This groundbreaking study looks at the evolution of the war novel, tracing the movement from the modernist novel that followed World War I to the postmodernist novel that followed World War II. The book uses close readings of iconic literary texts such as Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five to discover the origins of the postmodern zeitgeist. It [...]
Among the five basic tastes, sweet, sour, savory, salty, and bitter, we are most sensitive to bitterness, probably because bitter foods are often poisonous, so we evolved with tongues sensitive to danger. And yet, sometimes we seek out the bitter, in coffee, bitter chocolate, and beer. Jews are required to eat bitter herbs at Passover [...]
