Sublime
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‘You’re our longest-serving contributor,’ said Carleton, flinching at the bang. ‘Our most admired. Indeed I should say our most popular.’ I’m beginning to speak like him, he thought: Thomas Hart is catching, that’s the trouble. ‘I’ve often heard it said that it’s a consolation – that’s the general feeling, as I said to the board – to wake on Thursd
... See moreSarah Perry • Enlightenment
mean anything at all. On the front page of the gray old Times, I’m liable to encounter a chatty article about frying with propane gas. CNN lavished hours of airtime on a runaway bride. The magisterial tones of Walter Cronkite, America’s rich uncle, are lost to history, replaced by the ex-cheerleader mom style of Katie Couric. One reason the notion
... See moreMartin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

news that’s fit to print,” but it delivered a large enough proportion of published topics that, as a practical proposition,
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
Dear Mr. Nadeau:... See more
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather:
E.B. White • E.B. White’s Beautiful Letter to a Man Who Had Lost Faith in Humanity

I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities
... See moreSven Birkerts • The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
