All Essays

Essays and commentary on the ideas shaping our world.

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Culture

Maybe I'll Read That: Flattery Falls Flat

Installment the fourth being a review of ‘Lingua Franca’ by Clancy Martin being itself a review of ‘The Frenchmen’ by Emily Eakin a history of French theory

Selective ReaderSeptember 18, 20264 min read

Maybe I'll Read That: Flattery Falls Flat

Culture

You Can't Automate Eudaimonia

The question that I’d been hoping to examine through the use of both experience and philosophy was this: “Is there an ethical use for AI in writing?” As you’ll see, the question changed for me as I wrote.

Shannon ChamberlainAugust 21, 202620 min read

Culture

Scroll: 11 Media Missives; Only Concept, No Meaning (No Social Media, Not Now, Not Ever)

The rising dissemination of literary-based and philosophic-based social media accounts present a uniquely problematic crossroads for members of the literary community. On one path we find eyeballs, potential: a path to exposure for non-readers, for blossoming writers and artists; for former readers to become reinvigorated. On the other path we find addiction, deferment: Look that quote up down the road, finish that essay down the road, bookmark that clip for later, read later, paint later. Right now I need to Scroll.

Rowan FoxleyJuly 24, 202622 min read

Scroll: 11 Media Missives; Only Concept, No Meaning (No Social Media, Not Now, Not Ever)

Culture

What the Romantics Can Still Teach Us About Attention

Digital environments alter those conditions. Platforms are structured around interruption, compression, and rapid shifts in focus. These habits train the mind to scan quickly and move between stimuli at speed. Romantic writing provides a language for this change because its poems and prose depend on accumulation, tonal shifts, and relations among parts. Reading Wordsworth or Keats requires the mind to remain with an experience long enough to perceive its internal shape. That practice develops attention as a condition of judgment.

Kevin Lopez CruzJune 22, 20264 min read

What the Romantics Can Still Teach Us About Attention

Culture

Flowers Are Useless: In Praise of Inutility

Teaching English, like most vocations, comes with certain recurring challenges which define the job. In my line of work, convincing teenagers to read is perhaps the most fraught. Certain practices work to increase buy-in: dedicate time daily, in class, allow students to pick what they read, give a grade for reading if you are okay with making the entire exchange nakedly transactional.

Bill ShepherdJune 6, 202614 min read

Flowers Are Useless: In Praise of Inutility

Culture

Maybe I'll Read That: I Get It, But I Can't Explain It

Installment the third being a review of … being itself a review of …

Selective ReaderMay 25, 20263 min read

Maybe I'll Read That: I Get It, But I Can't Explain It

Culture

Interpretants

In the week or two before the man killed himself, I’d started training my attention while running on biosemiosis, by which I mean — please bear with me — I’d been trying to open my attention up to the exchange of symbols and signs among the living organisms and systems surrounding me. One of the reasons I’d started doing this was that my mind kept returning to things that I didn’t want it to keep returning to.

Brian LeliMay 16, 202615 min read

Culture

The Sober Bar That Won't Say Kratom

A Colorado kava chain markets itself as a healing space for people in recovery. Its menus never use the word "kratom." Its supply chain runs through a subsidiary with no public presence. The owner says that's all perfectly legal — and he may have a point. But a test may already have found kratom in his product, and he knows it.

James HartreeMay 8, 202615 min read

Culture

Am I a Sophist?

The teacher is an image of the whole of education, and in their presentation are communicated the aims and approaches of a life of learning. Standing before the classroom of students, the teacher has the option of showing themselves as a knower or a non-knower.

Aaron ShelsbyApril 25, 20267 min read

Culture

Annals of Obscenity: Art, The Person

In February 1921, John Quinn defended The Little Review in court against obscenity charges. As part of his defense, Quinn presented three experts in literature to explain the merits of Ulysses to the drowsy judges. But was it the compliment Philip Moeller of the Theatre Guild made it out to be when he, in his courtroom attestation to its merits, used Freud to explain Ulysses? Freud, after all, is useful notably for making sense of the incomprehensible ravings of madmen. And Moeller, like Freud, made himself sound like one, too, in the process of explaining; so much so that one of the white-haired judges requested that he “speak in a language that the court could understand.”

Jack SchaafApril 21, 202613 min read

Culture

Maybe I'll Read That: Book Passes ... Review Scores!

Installment the second being a review of Ian Buruma’s “Red Card” being itself a review of a book about soccer nationalism

Selective ReaderApril 18, 20262 min read

Maybe I'll Read That: Book Passes ... Review Scores!

Culture

Maybe I’ll Read That: Art in the Time of Ignorance

Installment the first being a review of “Art in the Time of Fascism” by Alex Preston being itself a review of “Watching Over Her” by Jean Baptiste Andrea.

Selective ReaderApril 18, 20262 min read

Maybe I’ll Read That: Art in the Time of Ignorance

Culture

A First-Century Slave Teaches Me How to Write

It took about 33 years for me to recover from my first professional success, and I owed it all to a first-century slave who never wrote down a single word in his life.

Shannon ChamberlainApril 18, 202619 min read

A First-Century Slave Teaches Me How to Write

Culture

Books Are Dead, And We Have Killed Them

AI summarization is something that the world of education, and particularly classical education, must reckon with if it is to show forth its value for young people growing up in the Intelligence Age. What is the value of the book if the ideas can be obtained separately from it? What is the value of the

Avery LinApril 18, 20268 min read