
Photo: Peter Horvath
Continue reading “Pillars of Salt”In Vonnegut, that which survives being proofed by satire, as Billy Pilgrim is so mercilessly in Slaughterhouse Five, becomes both human and wise.
Peter Starr on Wisdom and Culture

Photo: Peter Horvath
Continue reading “Pillars of Salt”In Vonnegut, that which survives being proofed by satire, as Billy Pilgrim is so mercilessly in Slaughterhouse Five, becomes both human and wise.

Photo: Nasty Women Writers
Continue reading “Simply Human”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.


Photos: The New Yorker, Penguin Books
Continue reading “The Death of Old Goriot”Rastignac gives up on his chance for wisdom, but Balzac clearly holds out hope, against considerable odds, for his implied reader.