The woman next to me was astonishing in her stillness. She appeared perfectly composed, quiet, almost fixed in her concentration. She was softly pretty, her camel’s hair coat slung over the back of her chair and a pile of books in front of...
It has long been recognized that getting an education is effective for bettering oneself and one’s chances in the world. But a degree and an education are not necessarily synonymous. Credentialing, not educating, has become the primary...
Pursuing the effect of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “He heightens worth who guardedly diminishes,” Charles Wright’s early lyrics are taut, controlled, and highly compressed. Although their diction is neither unnatural nor stilted, the poems are...
Francis Crick winged into the Eagle, a pub popular with researchers at Cambridge University’s nearby Cavendish Laboratory, boasting to one and all, “We have found the secret of life.” It was early in 1953, and the “we” referred to thirty...
I began reading Carol Shields’ books many years ago, with The Box Garden. In that novel there’s a passage that made me laugh so hard I thought I would do myself an injury. It’s the chapter describing a mother with scant taste but a lot of...
Once upon a time, a French academic domiciled in the United States thought it would be a good idea to mark the opening of his university’s newly instituted Humanities Center by holding a conference on Structuralism, the philosophic system...
