Positive Readings
An exploration and discussion of literature and ideas.
Why Censor The Catcher in the Rye?
Drama Begins as Magic: Anthony Burgess on the Origins of English Drama
Night-Rule: William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Hurly-Burly: William Shakespeare's Macbeth
A Unity of Feeling: John McPhee's The Headmaster
An Immortal Force: Robert Frost's "Hyla Brook" & "A Brook in the City"
Edge of the Woods: Robert Frost's "Desert Places" & "Come In"
Neither Wrong Nor Right: Robert Frost's "Into My Own" & "Acquainted with the Night."
The AI Warp: William Gaddis's Agape Agape
If You Really Want to Know the Truth: Dark Passengers on The Catcher in the Rye
Drinks Party: Plato's Symposium
Life-Giving Storms: Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time
GRADED: How should education be measured?
Nostalgia for the Primates: The Fall by Albert Camus
No Voice in the Land: Wendell Berry's "The Total Economy"
They're Reading the Classics: Norman Finkelstein on Trump's War on Woke in Education
Orwell's Slums: Down and Out in Paris and London
Existential Gender: The Origins of Gender Performativity
Elasticity Over Capacity: William Blake's Disruption of the Group Mind
Professional Deformation: The Academy's Fear of Schopenhauer
These Walls Have Narrowed: David Foster Wallace on Kafka's Humor
Death of Education: Capacity Building in the Age of Administration
Mosaics of Prejudice: The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
Servant to a Memory of Death: James Welch's Winter in the Blood
The Disappearance of Lit Men: On Becoming Serious People
The Mediocrity of Good & Evil: On Tyranny by Joseph Brodsky
Heartless Elegance: Jane Austen's Persuasion
Shekou Morning in Moderate Pollution
English as Afterlife: In a Room and a Half by Joseph Brodsky
The Horrorshow Droog: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess