Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Metro Column
02/27/2012 - Is There Something Wrong With The Way We Eat? A Review of The American Way of Eating by Tracy McMillan.
02/20/2012 - An Evening With The Poetry Brothel — An article about my experience at the NYC Poetry Brothel.
02/13/2012 - Why It’s OK To Be an Introvert — A review of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain.
02/07/2012 - Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories book and event review.
01/30/2012 - Interview With Edwin Frank, Editor of the NYRB Classics Series.
01/23/2012 - An Introduction
Essays/Reflections
Places - A reflection on moving from here to there.
What Do You Do? — At any given point in time 20% of the population of New York City is either asking or being asked this question. Here’s what it means.
Groundhog Day and Bourgouise Submission — What Groundhog day is really about.
The Role of the Reviewer — When and under what circumstances someone should give a negative review.
Smash — A short reflection upon looking a photograph of a car I once owned with a building’s worth of bricks on top of it.
Desires — A short reflection on the nature of desire.
Pictures
You can look at pictures of
- New York City in general or specific neighborhoods such as Sunset Park, Coney Island.
- Portraits of Friends
- Self-Portraits
Excerpts
Guilty Land — John Brown’s final statement, handed to a guard before he was executed.
Alone and in Tears — Snapshot of a children’s magazine handed out by Alfred Appel at a Lolita conference. A lesson for everyone.
This Mad Carnival of Loving — Poem by Heinrich Heine on the intoxication of love and its concomitant hangover.
Better Than Everyone — In a letter to Moses Moser Heine candidly admits that he is starting to think he is better than other people.
Finding Our Place — Proust on the process of waking up and remembering who we are.
Nothing New To Tell You — A letter from Heinrich Heine to Ludwig Robert, in which Heine opens with a reflection on death.
Just Leave it till the Maid Sweeps It Out — Kierkegaard being polite upon collapsing at a friend’s house. I hope these are my last words. From Kierkegaard, A Biography by Alastair Hannay.
Three Shadows — A poem by Dante Gabriel Rosseti that I found in Parade’s End, where the character Vincent McMasters recites this under his breath when in the presence of his beloved.
Disasters — Ford’s character Vincent McMasters reflects on how men fail. From Parade’s End.
Taciturny — Ford Maddox Ford describes a taciturn soul. From Parade’s End.
“Melancholy Dripped From Him When He Walked” — William Herndon on Abraham Lincoln, from Herndon’s Lincoln, Vol III.
Everyone I Know — Soren Kierkegaard tells a story about the consequences of not knowing ourselves.
What a Book Should Be — Franz Kafka sets the standard for what a book should be in a letter to Oskar Pollak.
A Gloomy Figure — James Joyce describing Stephen Hero’s feelings during social gatherings. I can relate. From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
God Only Knows — Kierkegaard’s “A” sits back and emits a sigh.
Answers — Ludwig Wittgenstein on questions and their answers. From Tractus Logico-Philosophicus.
Man is Advised — Reinhold Niebuhr on the anthropocentric tendencies of philosophy. From The Nature and Destiny of Man.
The War As Ironic Action — Paul Fussell on the irony of war. From The Great War and Modern Memory.
