Sublime

and it was Marx who turned them on to Takashi Murakami and Tsuguharu Foujita. It was Marx, with his love of avant-garde instrumental music, who played Brian Eno, John Cage, Terry Riley, Miles Davis, and Philip Glass on his CD player while Sadie and Sam worked. It was Marx who suggested they reread The Odyssey and The Call of the Wild and Call It Co

nobody in Busytown is idle – or if they are, they’re carefully hidden from view by the authorities, Pyongyang-style. What they aren’t, though, is overwhelmed. They exude the cheery self-possession of cats and pigs who have plenty to do, but also every confidence that their tasks will fit snugly into the hours available – whereas we live with the co

For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one’s skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great ge

Oldenburg contends the most important “first place” in a community is the home. The places where we work are our “second place” since work is required and serious and “reduces the individual to a single productive role.” Our “third place” is composed of those informal, neutral, public social spaces we visit voluntarily—where “conversation is the pr

Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds. The last class of my old profess

Andrew Taggart, who writes about our modern relationship to work, describes as “a first-person work‑centric story of progress about an individual’s life course.”⁠

During my first two years as an undergraduate, and a little less austerely during the third year, I lived as an intellectual. From 6:00 in the morning, when I rose, until 10:00 at night, when I went to bed, seven days a week, I was immersed in books and talk of books. That included mealtimes and most of my socializing hours. The survey courses prov