|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
128294
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Perhaps, like me. you have a propensity to collect books without quite knowing why. Over the years I have piled up books by and about, say, Ludwig Witt- genstein, Hannah Arendt, George Santayana, Philip Roth, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Franz Rosen- zweig, Penelope Fitzgerald, Thomas Bernhard - and not only not read them, but have no desire to do so. I have kept busy working on other things. And for a decade or two at a time. these texts simply gather dust on my shelves. But then, inevitably. I am drawn to these nearly forgotten volumes and. strangely, they prove pivotal to a new project: l recall. for instance, that Santayana ascended, literally, from the obscurity of a low shelf to earn a chapter in my book on William and Henry James. Wittgenstein made an analogous, if more circuitous, journey from the shadows, waiting untouched, until five years ago when I kept a long-held inner vow to read an- other languishing tome, one that had stared me down so often it had acquired an aura of intimidation: Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason: Wittgen-stein, Skeptirism, Morality and Tragedy. It was indeed intimidating. but also inspiring: that experience opened the door to more Cavell - and to deeper engagements with Emerson - and to Wittgenstein, who has joined the sage of Concord as a central ?gure in my current project on writers. artists. and philosophers who renounce their careers. The peculiarities of this manner of book buying - the absence of full consciousness and the long gap between acquisition and reading - puts me in mind
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
128295
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
You have only to wait, they will find you. The geese ?ying low over the marsh, glittering in black water. They find you. And the deer - how beautiful they are. as though their bodies did not impede them. Slowly they drift into the open through bronze panels of sunlight. Why would they stand so still if they were not waiting? Almost motionless, until their cages rust, the shrubs shiver in the wind. squat and lea?ess. You have only to let it happen: that cry - release, release - like the moon wrenched out of earth and rising full in its circle of arrows until they come before you like dead things. saddled with ?esh. and you above them. wounded and dominant.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|