Sublime

Later, at Cambridge, I told a fellow graduate student about my friend Antonio, who could have been recruited to play college football. All he had to do was attend makeup classes for two weeks and get a B. He went for the first week only and then bailed. My Cambridge friend replied, “Maybe it’s good he didn’t go to college. If that’s who he was and

Donald Trump kept trying to thread the needle with birther accusations. Maybe this sitting president isn’t a real American. Maybe this election—of a man, by the way, who was scrutinized the first time he ran for office—is a case where we need to take a closer look. This all happens on a more fundamental level than policy disputes. It would be comed

Mark’s field of time is harder to survey; because, since he is, at root, still an infant, his future is not yet something that cannot change. He believes there’s some simple, radical difference about him. He hopes it’s genius, fears it’s madness. Magda knows it’s neither. She knows that in truth Mark is just a radically simple person, wildly noncom

a belief

Each person is a fathomless mystery, and you have only an outside view of who they are.

“And you’re colored,” she said. Norman nodded. “Who can tell?” “Nobody,” Norman said. “Then why do you stay colored?” “Because of my mother. Because of my wife. Because I don’t want to be white. I don’t want to be one of them.” Sammy looked at me. “That’s a pretty good answer.”

However, he continues, over the last 50 years the need for people to be “legible” and fit into a standard model of work has merely become “industrially preferable.” This puts government and institutional leaders in a position where they are incentivized to convince people that following rigid paths in their institutions is the correct path for ever