Simply Human

Photo: Nasty Women Writers

It is only by seeing ourselves as fundamentally other—the contingent product of a culture that has no particular monopoly on truth—that we can come into our wisest possible, most “utterly human” selves.

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The Death of Old Goriot

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Photos: The New Yorker, Penguin Books

Rastignac gives up on his chance for wisdom, but Balzac clearly holds out hope, against considerable odds, for his implied reader.

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