Reviews
Skinny Legs and All: The Seriousness of the Absurd
Talking objects, messy love, art, philosophy, and global conflict. All in one book. “In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.” Over time I have come to believe that the higher the element of fantasy in a book, the more serious it often...
The Reading Chair: Falling in Love with The Sirens of Titan
…and the Joke That Explains Everything “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Famous words by Malachi Constant, the man who gets rich by chance and ends up in space by chance, feels extraordinarily deeply...
Fire: The Unforgiving Ironist
Writers have always feared and worshipped the most perilous ironist of all — the restless, consuming, and merciless fire. “It was a pleasure to burn.” Few first lines have scorched themselves so deeply into memory. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury gave us a world where...
Sea: The Oldest Ironist
Aashisha traces writers' obsession with the oldest ironist of all — the boundless, beloved, and beautiful sea. The sea is a fascinating concept, not only because water makes up three-fourths of the planet as well as the human body (thanks, fourth-grade writer mind)...
Rowing with Imagination – On Xenophon
Nigel writes an encomium for the Cost of Glory... Twenty minutes on the rowing machine and the display will dutifully say I have rowed 3.7 kilometres. But that is not really where I am. In my mind, memories merge. I am rowing from Miletus on the Maeander to Lesbos....
What The Remains of the Day Teaches About Life’s Ironies
In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro holds up a mirror to our own compromises— how much of life we trade away in the name of duty. “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I wish. To be...
The Reading Chair Backstory : On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith has called On Beauty an “homage” to E.M. Forster’s Howards End, though not in a plot-by-plot sense. Zadie Smith has used Forster’s structure as “scaffolding” - as a way to learn to write an English novel, something that made her feel like she’d earned...
The Reading Chair : On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is a novel about family, art, and class but mostly, it’s about the exquisite awkwardness of believing in ideas that no longer seem to work. “The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.” — On Beauty, Zadie Smith Have you ever...
Some Marginalia from Somerset Maugham: What Counts as a Successful Life?
So many years have passed since I read The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham and yet his words seem more relevant today than ever. “He had a feeling that he was on the threshold of a discovery which he must make for himself.” - W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge My...








