I keep looking at objects in my house with expectancy, staring into the bright eyes and smiling mouths of all sorts of anthropomorphic animal faces—the bee on the graham cracker box, the Pokemon backpack clip, the dragonfly wind chimes. I am hoping they will speak to me. They stare back dumbly, without consciousness, let alone [...]
To my knowledge, only two of the faculty members in my old grad-school philosophy department professed a belief in God, and one of those was a Catholic who said he’d gladly contribute to a fund to assassinate the Pope. One of the atheist professors once remarked, referring to a theological dispute between two forms of [...]
A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Owning a thing of beauty, however, is perhaps more complicated.
Going to a gallery or a museum and looking at paintings, sculptures, videos, photos, etc., I often come away fulfilled and changed in a way that provokes in me great thought about aesthetics, the art market, the power [...]
From Part I: And with some chagrin, I had to admit that my list of guidelines — although I stand foot-firm behind them — represent part of the problem with my discipline, perhaps with the academy as a whole, or at least the humanities. Getting a Ph.D. in literature (in my case, American Studies), can actually strip from you [...]
When I was a kid I told my parents I wanted to be a writer. They responded, as good parents should have, practically. They gave me a typewriter with a fresh ribbon, on which I began composing furious little stories about Sherlock Holmes. And they warned me there was no money in it.
What they told [...]