If there is an epicene, all-encompassing term for the shivering, shimmering stuff with which we adorn sandwiches, toast, and other baked goods, then it is not “jam,” not “conserves,” not “preserves,” not “fruit spread” or “spreadable fruit...
For nearly thirty years, the Berlin Wall—a ninety-six-mile partition that separated West Berlin from Soviet-controlled Germany surrounding it—was the Cold War’s geopolitical line in the sand. But by 1989, the Soviet Union was weakening, and...
Joseph Brodsky—the Joseph addressed in the epigraph—once said that when you hear Derek Walcott’s voice, “the world unravels.” It is a voice concomitant with the sea, and by connection, history.
He is not much read today, but when his book Talents and Geniuses appeared in 1957, the exemplary public intellectual Gilbert Highet could count on two things.