Add a CommentThis fascinating piece from the Economist-affiliated Intelligent Life is full of interesting tidbits. Hemingway checking out books on liver damage from the library. Cheever, newly sober, finishing a book in a year. And a strange conclusion that “maximalist” writers should never get sober.
What’s Lost When Some Become Rich
Thursday, July 30th, 2009Letter from India, The International Herald Tribune
KUILAPALAYAM, INDIA — The other day I went for a drive on my motorcycle and realized that my world had changed completely.
I drove along a cement road that was once a dirt path. The road leads to the ocean. I used to be able to see the ocean from the top of the road. Now the view has been usurped by new apartment buildings and guesthouses and shops.
When I was a boy, the road was bordered by emerald-green rice fields. There’s not a rice field in sight anymore, only the neon greens — and pinks and purples and oranges — of the concrete blocks that have taken their place.
The area around where I live was once an isolated rural hamlet. It was a hundred miles, along a potholed road, from the nearest big city, Chennai, or Madras, as it was called at the time. I grew up here, in the country, surrounded by five villages. I had an idyllic childhood. My life ran to the rhythms of an agrarian world: bullock carts and hand plows, bicycles, windmills. MORE–>
Positively Orwellian
Saturday, July 18th, 2009Kindle users beware: Amazon can make your books vanish from afar: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984_from_kindle/
Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
Thursday, July 16th, 2009I’ve just stumbled across this article by Robert Nozick that tries to explain why “wordsmith” intellectuals are anti-market. I’m not sure I’m totally convinced, but his hypothesis–essentially, that they resent their low valuation in a capitalist economy–is nonetheless interesting reading. (I studied with Nozick as an undergraduate, in a course called something like “Socrates, Buddha, Jesus”!)
The Secret of His Success
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Review of White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga, The New York Times Book Review
Learning to Love America, Again
Monday, November 3rd, 2008A posting about the presidential elections in America, from Granta.com
Over the last twenty months or so, as I have followed the presidential election from afar, something of my old admiration for America has been rekindled. Over and over, I have watched to my surprise as American voters have rejected the demagoguery they embraced in the two previous elections.
Letter From Pondicherry
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008An article on man-made beach erosion in South India, published in Granta.
Beaches are fragile ecosystems; what starts on one stretch continues along another. Over the years, the erosion has crept up the coast, eating away at the shoreline beyond Pondicherry, swallowing the homes and boats of fishermen. Villagers have been evacuated and livelihoods have been destroyed.
Up in Smoke
Sunday, July 2nd, 2006Review of English, August, by Upamanyu Chatterjee, The New York Times Book Review
‘Maps for Lost Lovers’: Little Murder
Sunday, May 22nd, 2005Review of Maps for Lost Lovers, by Nadeem Aslam, The New York Times Book Review
Behind the Digital Divide
Thursday, March 10th, 2005What do people on the ground really think of the digital divide? A ground-up view, published in The Economist.