writers ⁽¹²⁾

D.M. Thomas’ Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in his Life. (1998, New York: St. Martin's Press.) When I was cataloguing this biography I was reminded of the copy of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago my mother had on the family bookcase at home. I eventually read it and went on to borrow from the state library in Launceston a hardcover of One Day in the Life…

Simone Weil and The Need for Roots as an example of the world-bulding urge, and its sub-urges to order order, when/as\how we should should Originally posted on substack in July 2023. There are many people whose names pass me by and for decades I nod and think, must read them one day. Recent chatbots have developed greater facility to 'read'…

The Origins of Virtue came out 25 years ago when I was 32, and I have a dim memory of it. Dim and thin, compared to a memorable reading I had of Matt Ridley's The Red Queen, which I borrowed from the State Library of Tasmania’s Hobart shelves. I can visualise where it was on the shelf, on a bay…

I've been wary of 'the true self' for some time, maybe it is just a genX eyeroll at the boomers of my youth trying to 'find themselves' while also claiming to invent everything they had not learned about yet. But then they were the most modern generation, i.e. living as part of the biggest or widest demographic exploration of modernity…

Last week in Atlas of non-landscape artists I said that a book had been purchased and subsequently delivered, after I had watched Sam Harris Still Hasn’t “Solved” Morality w/ ‪@lanceindependent in which the book had been mentioned by Lance, with particular reference to Stephen Stich and Edouard Machery. I still haven’t found time to watch the entire stream, but have…

Upon my algorithm a video from DigitalGnosis appeared streamingly with the title Sam Harris Still Hasn’t “Solved” Morality w/ ‪@lanceindependent‬, 2024. It’s a critique video reacting the one by Sam Harris (i.e. streaming in realtime while listening to it) . The pair is quite well-prepared so it is not a “I’m amazed” reaction video. This is the first I’ve seen…