#Salman Rushdie age

[garudabluffs]

'Magical Overthinking' author says information overload can stoke irrational thoughts

APRIL 9, 2024

On "thought terminating clichés" and the notion of manifestation

It describes a sort of stock expression that's easily memorized, easily repeated, and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning. ... So a new age thought terminating cliché might sound like something like, "Well, that's just a victim mindset." Or "you need to sit with that." Or "don't let yourself be ruled by fear." ...

36-Minute Listen Read More Interview Highlights https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243632217/amanda-montell-the-age-of-magical-overthinking

SALMAN RUSHDIE "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."

+ "Not even the visionary or mystical experience lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, it's readers; to be, for a secular and materialistic culture, some sort of replacement, for what the love of god offers in the world of faith."

+ "The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air,that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins."

+ "Sometimes legends make reality, and become more usefulthan facts."

+ "How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared."

+ "Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy."

[astrotruther]

Rising Signs Observations

Unserious =͟͟͞♡

➶ Aries Ascendant is a very rare placement. The most identifiable trait of these natives is their innocent faces. The sign of Aries brings a child-like quality. These people are often told that they look way younger than their age. They also often don't indulge in cosmetic procedures because they like their youthful/ natural look. E.g. Penélope Cruz, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

➶ Taurus Ascendants (both men & women) are some of the most on-paper/ conventionally beautiful people that I've never looked at twice. I'm sorry, you all are amazing, I've just never been attracted to a Taurus Rising. E.g. Miley Cyrus, Austin Butler. With Gemini in their 2nd House, they can be very successful writers. E.g. Toni Morrison, George R. R. Martin, Salman Rushdie.

➶ Gemini Ascendant women have some of the most unforgettable faces. They also have a youthful look but their beauty is more unconventional than Aries Ascendant. E.g. Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart, Amy Winehouse, Priyanka Chopra, Drew Barrymore. Men with this placement are also popular but there's nothing jaw dropping about their looks (or maybe it's just me lol). E.g. Matthew McConaughey, Armie Hammer, Ashton Kutcher.

➶ Cancer Rising men are so chill and have a knack for comedy. E.g. Paul Rudd, Matt LeBlanc, Hasan Minhaj. Their talking voice can be a little goofy; E.g. The Weeknd lol. Women are usually sweet but can be problematic/ drama queens if unevolved. E.g. Chrissy Teigen, Tyra Banks.

➶ The placement that's hands down most likely to gain massive fame is Leo Ascendant. An issue most of them seem to face is of longevity. Often they're associated with a certain project or stereotyped in some way that people can't see them as a versatile individual. Blake Lively - Gossip Girl, Lucy Hale - Pretty Little Liars, Matthew Perry - F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Selena Gomez - Justin Bieber, lol sorry!

➶ Virgo Risings have the most boy/ girl next door aura about them. They have a similar charming wit as Gemini Risings which makes them likable and popular. However, these people may have skeletons in their closet. They are ordinary enough that nobody suspects them of any wrong-doing. This is the placement that can get away with murder. Even if controversies come to light, they're much later in their careers after they've amassed fame, wealth and success. E.g. Steve Jobs, Chris Noth.

➶ Libra Ascendants don't necessarily have the best fashion sense but they always look good. They're very likeable and often down to earth people. Very loyal. Some of them gain a lot of attention for the people they choose to date. E.g. Jennifer Aniston, Britney Spears, Yoko Ono.

➶ I've seen people say Capricorn Risings are a lot like Scorpio Risings due to dark aesthetic/ piercings etc. While Saturn does influence the aesthetic but it is still a very surface level observation based on celebs that often just put on a persona. The essence of these two is quite different: Scorpio risings are charmers. They look you in the eye while you talk to them. And the eyes are the most obvious identifying factor. Rather than having a specific shape, a Scorpio rising's eyes have a depth to them that makes you feel 'seen', and has an underlying promise of understanding/ accepting your true self. Also, it is THE bollywood IT boy placement. E.g. Shah Rukh Khan, Hritik Roshan, Arjun Rampal. On the other hand, Cap. Risings are charming in a less personal way. They are the lookers, the ones on the stage, the center of attention; they radiate their charm to the hoards of awestruck admirers. There's no reading between the lines for unsaid promises, just a very attractive person. E.g. Zac Efron, Ariana Grande.

➶ Sagittarius Risings have a natural talent in acting. The musicians with this placement don't really standout to me tbh. Some may look intimidating from afar but they're very kind people once you talk to them. Their fashion sense depends on whether or not they have a good stylist. E.g. Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster, Elizabeth Taylor.

➶ Aquarius Risings - popular & widely talked about on the internet, no matter if the career is prolific or not. These are the celebs whom most people have a crush on. E.g. Ian Somerhalder, Zendaya, Aaliyah, Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Orlando Bloom.

➶ Pisces Risings - Something very distinct about their look or the way they speak/ sing etc. Sometimes the eyes have an intimidating look to them but they're the least intimidating people ever. E.g. Billie Eilish, Adam Driver, Peter Dinklage, Morgan Freeman, Ellen DeGeneres, Kajol.

Click daily to help Palestinians🍉🙏🏽: https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

[chthonic-cassandra]

Tagged by @littleshopoflorrors and have taken an absolute age to do this.

Last book I read: Reread Henry James' collection of travel writing, Italian Hours. I fell in love with the prose when I first read it as a teenager and wanted to see how it help up.

Book I recommend: No recommendations are universal, but I think many more people should read C. J. Cherryh's Cyteen.

Book I couldn't put down: Most recently Angie Cruz' How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water.

Book I've read twice (or more): So many, but two of my most frequent comfort rereads are Robin McKinley's Sunshine and A. S. Byatt's Frederica Quartet, both of which I end up reading about once a year.

A book on my TBR: My TBR list is approximately 800 books long. For now let's say Salman Rushdie's Victory City.

A book I've put down: Most recently, Alexander Delacroix's Heart of the Impaler, which is a very bad Vlad Tepes novel.

A book on my wishlist: So different from the TBR list because it is a book that you actually want to buy? I rarely buy books I haven't yet read unless they are unavailable at the library, but two on my list currently are Eleanor Longden's Listening to the Voices in My Head and Tanith Lee's The Blood of Roses.

A favorite book from childhood: Lloyd Alexander's The Castle of Llyr.

A book you would give a friend: Depends very much on the friend! Let's imagine I am being lightly flirtatious and give this hypothetical friend Lynda Hart's Between the Body and the Flesh.

A book of poetry or lyrics you own: Trish Salah's Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1.

A non-fiction book you own: Vincent Woodward's The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture, which more people should read.

Currently reading: Tanith Lee's Fatal Women: The Esther Garber Novellas

Planning on reading next: Either C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner or I'll do a Middlemarch reread, I haven't decided yet.

Tagging, if they want to do it, @idionkisson, @child-of-hurin, @awildwickedslip, @amourduloup, @kareenvorbarra and @mysikrolik

[13eyond13]

How many of these "Top 100 Books to Read" have you read?

(633) 1984 - George Orwell

(616) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

(613) The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger

(573) Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(550) Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

(549) The Adventures Of Tom And Huck - Series - Mark Twain

(538) Moby-Dick - Herman Melville

(534) One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

(527) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

(521) The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck

(521) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

(492) Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen

(489) The Lord Of The Rings - Series - J.R.R. Tolkien

(488) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

(480) Ulysses - James Joyce

(471) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

(459) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

(398) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(396) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

(395) To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

(382) War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy

(382) The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

(380) The Sound And The Fury - William Faulkner

(378) Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Series - Lewis Carroll

(359) Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

(353) Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

(352) Middlemarch - George Eliot

(348) Animal Farm - George Orwell

(346) Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

(334) Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

(325) Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

(320) Harry Potter - Series - J.K. Rowling

(320) The Chronicles Of Narnia - Series - C.S. Lewis

(317) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

(308) Lord Of The Flies - William Golding

(306) Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

(289) The Golden Bowl - Henry James

(276) Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

(266) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

(260) The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

(255) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Series - Douglas Adams

(252) The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne

(244) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

(237) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery

(235) The Trial - Franz Kafka

(233) Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner

(232) The Call Of The Wild - Jack London

(232) Emma - Jane Austen

(229) Beloved - Toni Morrison

(228) Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

(224) A Passage To India - E.M. Forster

(215) Dune - Frank Herbert

(215) A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce

(212) The Stranger - Albert Camus

(209) One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

(209) The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(206) Dracula - Bram Stoker

(205) The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

(197) A Confederacy Of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

(193) Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

(193) The Age Of Innocence - Edith Wharton

(193) The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling - Henry Fielding

(192) Under The Volcano - Malcolm Lowry

(190) The Odyssey - Homer

(189) Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

(188) In Search Of Lost Time - Marcel Proust

(186) Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

(185) An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser

(182) The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

(180) Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse

(179) The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann

(178) Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

(178) Tropic Of Cancer - Henry Miller

(176) The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

(176) On The Road - Jack Kerouac

(175) The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(173) The Giver - Lois Lowry

(172) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

(172) A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

(171) Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

(171) The Ambassadors - Henry James

(170) Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

(167) The Complete Stories And Poems - Edgar Allen Poe

(166) Ender's Saga - Series - Orson Scott Card

(165) In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

(164) The Wings Of The Dove - Henry James

(163) The Adventures Of Augie March - Saul Bellow

(162) As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

(161) The Hunger Games - Series - Suzanne Collins

(158) Anne Of Greene Gables - L.M. Montgomery

(157) Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

(157) Neuromancer - William Gibson

(156) The Help - Kathryn Stockett

(156) A Song Of Ice And Fire - George R.R. Martin

(155) The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford

(154) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

(153) I, Claudius - Robert Graves

(152) Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

(151) The Portrait Of A Lady - Henry James

(150) The Death Of The Heart - Elizabeth Bowen

[timetravellingkitty]

hi reva do u have any good fictional indian book recs? literally any genre works! thank u sm in advance if u answer this shfhshd

hi! I'd recommend the hungry tide by amitav ghosh (contemporary fiction) and the last queen by chitra bannerjee divakaruni (historical fiction). i liked the namesake by jhumpa lahiri (coming of age) but i think i'm due for a reread to see if it holds up. i also liked midnight's children by salman rushdie (magical realism and historical fiction). i'm planning on reading when i hit you by meena kandasamy (literary fiction), the jasmine throne by tasha suri (fantasy) and cuckold by kiran nagarkar (historical fiction). i hope you find something you like!

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Sebastian Michaelis: Hold it right there! (Shouting at the boys upon seeing they were tossing his young Master up in the air) (Volume 17)

See these panels above? Perusing Twitter, which is a bad idea as it is infested with stan following, one account highlighted the third panel as a favourite. The poster admonished that it should not be taken as Sebaciel by the way. Therefore, they, in the end, made a series of posts pinned why Yana Toboso is mot intending to go that route.

I would say I miss the days when Kuroshitsuji readers/viewers tried to make an intelligible essay/academically critiquing the manga/anime instead of outrightly cancelling Yana Toboso and applying the death of the author while she’s still alive and creating more, but I was not a part of that fandom in the early 2010s.

“Whereas the main characters’ relationship is not explicitly sexual, it is suggestively so, with the narrative providing numerous ‘eroticizable’ scenarios between Sebastian and Ciel (bath scenes, dressing scenes, cross-dressing scenes, rescues, dancing lessons, etc.). Kuroshitsuji, therefore, can be understood in the context of boys’ love manga—that is, manga that focuses on male-male romantic and erotic relationships.

“The paradox is what makes the scene work affectively. The reader needs to value the child’s innocence and to want the demon to be the champion who protects that innocence, yet we are no time allowed to forget that those are not the terms of their relationship.

“… yet, again, much of the appeal to the reader is presented in the demon’s loyal, solicitous protection of his helpless charge. Just as the wordplay of text layers ‘dog’ with ‘humble servant’ and ‘knight’ in describing the demon’s relationship to the child, so the narrative consistently demands that we acknowledge our contradictory affective investments.” ( x )

(Volume 1)

Instead I am relegated to readers of today—both under the age of 18 or who have read it when they were 14 or younger and now scandalised that they still like Kuroshitsuji—complaining how “problematic” Kuroshitsuji is because of its dark themes. Condemning Yana Toboso, accusing her of pedophilia, homophobia, and racism. Whereas shipping the main fictional characters has become political. When in the first place, 14-year-olds aren’t supposed to read nor watch it.

Every time I read a fandom discourse re a piece of media or fan creation that is deemed “problematic,” I just remember Salman Rushdie’s words:

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

Antis must keep his words in mind because It applies to both the media and fan creations as well. Don’t like, don’t read.

There’s a fine line between religious fundamentalism/political ideology that destroys people. A fanatic attempted to kill Rushdie for decades. And recently, one of them almost succeeded. Antis that preach moral high ground recommend fan fic writers, artists and their followers to kill themselves are hypocritical and nonsensical to be honest.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Rosemary Neill

Published: Dec 2, 2022

In his bestseller The God Delusion, published in 2006, author Richard Dawkins famously wrote that the god of the Old Testament is “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser” and “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal … capriciously malevolent bully’’.

Not for nothing has Dawkins been described as “a poster boy for militant atheism”.

The former Oxford University professor and evolutionary biologist is also regarded as a brilliant and passionate science communicator: His 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, reframed our understanding of evolution and has been named by the Royal Society as the most inspiring science book of all time, while his latest volume, Flights of Fancy – a surprisingly lyrical work aimed at the over 12s – looks at how animals and humans have “learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies’’.

In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in a Prospect magazine poll. Yet in recent years, his controversial tweets and remarks about everything from aborting Down’s syndrome foetuses to Islamic fundamentalism have provoked sharp criticism and threats of cancellation.

Now aged 81, the career controversialist will conduct a national speaking tour in Australia in February, addressing topics including the wonders of science, the importance of reason and his scepticism about religion. Ahead of his tour, which starts in Melbourne, the British author gave a typically forthright, sometimes combative interview to Review.

During this encounter, conducted over Zoom from his Oxford home, Dawkins oscillates between donnish erudition and a kind of pugnacious rationalism, as he argues that parents should not have the right to “indoctrinate” their children with their chosen religion; that human foetuses are “no more a person” than animal foetuses; that anti-vaxxers are selfish; and that transgenderism has become “a mimetic epidemic” among schoolchildren. He also warns that human beings could one day be obliterated by the same kind of meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.

You have been called a militant atheist, and you’ve argued that religion causes wars and entrenches bigotry. Yet you use the borrowed phrase “tooth fairy agnostic” to describe yourself. Tooth fairy agnostic – that’s right. We are all actually agnostic about anything you can’t actually disprove. You can’t disprove the tooth fairy; it’s trivial to bother about it, so that’s the way I am about gods.

Why do you oppose faith schools? I am not against education in religion. I think that’s important and that children should be taught about religion because it’s such an important part of history, politics, art and music. I’m against educating in a particular religion – I’m against a child being told, “You are a member of this church and therefore this is what you believe”. I like the child to be told, “There are people who call themselves Catholics and they believe this, and there are people who call themselves Muslims and they believe that” and so on. That’s important, but children should not be told what to believe.

Would banning faith schools amount to erosion of parental choice and authority? I think children have rights, and the right of a child not to be indoctrinated is important.

You get hate mail from evangelical Christians and you are also a trenchant critic of Islamic fundamentalism. As an outspoken public intellectual, what did you think of the recent attack on The Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie? It’s horrible. It’s irrational. It’s vicious. It was allegedly perpetrated by a very foolish person who doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has been indoctrinated by his Islamic upbringing and that’s one kind of reason why I find indoctrination so bad. (The suspect, Hadi Matar, has said that Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa against Rushdie, is, “a great person”. Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges brought against him in the US.)

Many Christian fundamentalists in the US oppose abortion. What is your view of the US Supreme Court ruling that overturned the historic Roe v Wade decision? I deplore that.

You maintain that pro-choice activists in America are using the wrong tactics. Why? I think the pro-abortion lobby is tactically unsound when they say something like, “A woman’s body is her own to do what she likes with”. I happen to think that’s right, but that’s not going to cut any ice with somebody who thinks that an embryo is a baby, and they think therefore that abortion is murder. They’ll say, “Ah, but she contains another body which is not her own.” I think we should tackle that assumption. We should say, “A foetus is no more a person than, and no more has personal feelings … than the foetus of a cow or a pig, let alone an adult cow or pig.”

You dedicate your latest book, Flights of Fancy, to the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Why does he impress you? He certainly is a high flyer and he certainly is a hero of our times. I do admire him and I think that he’s an appropriate dedicatee for a book about flight. He’s a man with immense imagination and he is a genius as an engineer, a genius as an entrepreneur.

In Flights of Fancy, you note how, just decades after the Wright brothers’ historic flight, we were in the era of supersonic and space flight. Does this constitute an extraordinary burst of progress within a short time? It is rather remarkable, isn’t it? I think it’s a very good century to have lived in for that reason. In a way it’s rather sad that things (to do with space flight) are only just taking off now after the 1960s, when men first stepped on the moon, and nothing much has happened since then, until quite recently. I’m glad things are getting going again.

In 2021, the American Humanist Society withdrew an award they had given you because of an old tweet. In that tweet, you called for a discussion about the vilification of those who deny transgender people “literally are what they identify as”. How did you feel about the award being cancelled? To be honest, I had actually forgotten that I ever had that award, but it is upsetting when your own side turn against you, of course. I’d never worried about religious fundamentalists disliking me, but when it’s your own team, it’s upsetting. It’s a remarkably foolish thing for them to do, because all I did was to raise a subject for discussion.

Has academe changed for the worse in terms of restrictions on freedom of speech since you first worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University in the 1960s and ’70s? It’s not possible to imagine that we’re going to go on with this nonsense where you can’t even discuss something.

Why is the transgender debate so heated, and such a no-go area for many commentators? You’d have to ask a psychologist or a sociologist about that. It (the debate) seems to me to be utter nonsense. Of course, there are people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and one has to be sympathetic to them. But there clearly is a mimetic epidemic, especially among schoolchildren who get persuaded that somehow the cool thing to do is to be trans, and this is a very disturbing by-product of a very genuine phenomenon, which is gender dysphoria. That is quite a rare thing, but it’s being blown up into a kind of false, common thing.

With the recent closure of the Tavistock child gender clinic, it appears the UK is adopting a more cautious approach to hormonal and surgical treatments for trans-identifying children. How do you view this development? I think we’re seeing the beginnings of a very appropriate reversal of this trend.

You have 2.9 million followers on Twitter. Do your more contentious tweets scare your publishers? Possibly, but I’m not here to talk about Twitter.

Even so, why are you drawn to Twitter, given the nasty pile-ons that are a feature of the platform? I suppose, misguidedly, I thought it was rather a good way of raising discussion. That’s why I put “discuss” at the end of so many tweets, (as) a follow-on of the Oxford tutorials. I am afraid I rather over-estimated the intelligence of the Twitter audience.

You’ve said it would be fun to fly like a bird or go hang-gliding. Does your fear of heights hold you back? I certainly wouldn’t want to jump off a cliff.

No bungy-jumping for Richard Dawkins then? I might run down a hill, maybe.

Why do you believe there is merit in people establishing a colony on another planet? This, I think, is one of the motives of Elon Musk wanting to go to Mars. It’s interesting, by the way, that NASA has just succeeded in diverting or changing the orbit of a small asteroid. They need to do it for a much bigger asteroid in order to save us from the sort of catastrophe that hit the dinosaurs. But (the recent NASA diversion) is a very important first step. It’s a magnificent feat of engineering and science and mathematics.

During the Covid lockdowns, you wrote two nonfiction books and failed to complete a novel about bringing back Homo erectus, our ancient ancestor. Have you given up on writing fiction? I abandoned that, at least temporarily. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought.

Why do you argue the Covid pandemic has been good for science? As soon as the genetic code sequence of the virus was decoded, which nowadays can be done very swiftly, several different teams of scientists got to work on making a vaccine, and they did it in double quick time; astonishingly quickly. I think that’s a great tribute to the genius of our species.

What about the rise of the anti-vaxxers? Has that surprised you? Tragically, really stupid opposition to vaccination has been whipped up, mostly in America, but it spread to other countries as well. A lot of people don’t understand that vaccination is not just about protecting yourself, it’s about protecting society as a whole, to get herd immunity so the epidemic doesn’t spread.

Is there a selfishness inherent in the anti-vaccination movement? Yes, they just think it’s a matter of individual liberty. They don’t realise that refraining from vaccination for no very good reason is rather like driving on the wrong side of the road …. We do owe a certain curtailment of individual liberty in the interests of society.

You invented the word “meme” (an idea or behaviour that spreads from person to person within a society.) We’ve seen Donald Trump turn memes into a political art form. Were you dismayed by that? He just lies and lies all the time, and unfortunately, I think it was Goebbels who said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Huge numbers of Americans actually believe Trump’s lies and it’s a tragedy.

You live in Oxford and drive a Tesla. Are we all going to be driving electric cars in future? It looks like it, doesn’t it? I think that’s a very good thing.

Some detractors say your reputation as a fierce supporter of atheism is in danger of eclipsing your insights as a visionary evolutionary biologist. I hope not. I’ve only written two books about atheism and about 17 about science, so really science is by far the more important part of my life.

The God Delusion has sold millions of copies, but what do you regard as your most significant book? Probably The Extended Phenotype, which is one book that I wrote for my professional colleagues, although I like to think it’s readable by nonscientists as well. It’s the main book in which I propose something which I suppose is original; something that is all my own.

Scientists don’t know how the universe started. Isn’t that an argument in itself that a god or creator must have kicked things off? That’s a terrible idea! The idea that just because you don’t know what the answer to a question is, therefore god did it. I mean, that’s a ridiculous argument. By all means say we don’t know – that’s true, we don’t know – therefore it’s better to try to find out. We don’t just lie down and say, “Oh, god must have done it”.

Across the globe millions of people, including those without a financial safety net, find comfort in religion. Can you see how rubbishing their spiritual beliefs can be perceived as arrogance? Not arrogance. I mean, if they don’t want to read my books, they don’t have to. My books are about what I believe to be true and what evidence is. I’m not going to refrain from writing books for fear that it might upset people. I write books about what is supported by scientific evidence. That is what I try to do, and if the evidence changes, of course I change my mind. That’s about it, really. I’m a scientist who writes books about science.

[ Via: https://archive.vn/Se49o ]

[lau-and-history]

Books of 2023

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie

Die Dorfschullehrerin (Duology) by Eva Völler

Die rätselhaften Honjin-Morde by Seishi Yokomizo

The Man who died Twice by Richard Osman

Die Abenteur des Apollo (Series) by Rick Riordan

The Age of Darkness: Das Ende der Welt by Katy Rose Pool

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Before the Coffee gets Cold. Tales form the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

The Bullet that missed by Richard Osman

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Before your Memory fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan

Victory City by Salman Rushdie

The Penelopiad by Margret Atwood

He who drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

Audio Books

Der grillende Killer by Chang Kuo-Li

Butter by Asako Yuzuki

Die Tribute von Panem X: Das Lied von Vogel und Schlange by Suzanne Collins

Der Pfirsichgarten by Melissa Fu

Wie viel von diesen Hügeln ist Gold by C Pam Zhang

Die Drei ??? und die rätselhaften Bilder by William Arden

Die Tage in der Buchhandlung Morisaki by Satoshi Yagisawa

Mortal Engines (Quadrology) by Philip Reeve

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

[uispeccoll]

#VoicesFromTheStacks

Photo from ursulakleguin.com

Ursula K. Le Guin was an American science fiction and speculative fiction author. She was born Ursula Krober in Berkeley, California on October 21st, 1929. She died on January 22nd, 2018, at the age of 88. 

Her father was an anthropologist and her mother had a graduate degree in psychology. Le Guin and her three brothers had access to a large library. She read early science fiction and fantasy books and magazines as a child, including Astounding Science Fiction and Thrilling Wonder Stories, issues of which can be found in the Special Collections and Archives Rusty Hevelin collection. 

She would publish her first work, a poem titled “Folksong from the Montayna Province”, in 1959. Her published work included poetry, short fiction, novels and nonfiction essays. Her book The Left Hand of Darkness would garner her critical and popular success, making her one of the first well-known female science fiction and fantasy authors, and one of the most famous science fiction authors, period.

During her career, Le Guin was primarily known for her speculative fiction work, notably her Hanish Cycle and Earthsea series. The Hanish Cycle posits a universe where humans have formed an interplanetary alliance. Her most famous Hanish book was The Left Hand Of Darkness, considered one of the first works of feminist science fiction, and deals largely with gender, sexuality, and politics. Her Earthsea books are considered classics within the children's fantasy genre.

Le Guin's influence as a fantasy and science fiction author is still felt today, she was a noted influence on writers like Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie, and is considered to have been the first writer to create a "wizard school" with her Earthsea series.

Special Collections has copies of many of Le Guin's writings, including signed copies.

-- Sarah D., Special Collections, Olson Graduate Assistant

[rabothekerabekian]

My top books I read in 2023:

1: Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut) - I love Vonnegut’s writing so much, and Sirens is such a great narrative on free will and loving whoever is around to be loved. (Plus chrono-synclastically-infundibulated is just fun to say)

2: Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison) - already a book about important social issues that are still incredibly relevant today, Ellison’s style portrays a lifelike picture of the politics of race in America.

3: Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie) - The language and style of this book make it a delight to read as Rushdie paints an incredible mural across a canvas of Indian historical events interwoven with the supernatural to create an amazing story.

4: Job, A Comedy of Justice (Robert Heinlen) - Excellent satire of fundamentalist religion, packed with jokes and reality shifts, a complex world that goes from Mexico to Kansas to heaven to hell has a lot to say about religion.

5: The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) - The Devil and his entourage cause chaos in Soviet Moscow, in addition to a narrative about Pontius Pilate. An excellent and absurd premise sets up a criticism of humanity but also a defense of it, both in Judea 2000 years ago and now.

6: Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges) - While the writing can be dense, so much is packed into these short stories parsing the meaning is definitely worth it. Fantastical scenarios act as mirrors to reality and each story leaves just enough to the readers imagination to make it a compelling and thought provoking work about the labyrinthine ways of reality.

7: Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) - I love novels you can get lost in, and such a rich portrayal of Igbo life easily lends itself to a complex world that many people failed to see about Africa. Important social issues are dealt with and both extreme ways of living are critiqued in a compelling narrative.

8: Bluebeard (Kurt Vonnegut) - A coming of age a going of age and the Armenian diaspora are explored through the life of Abstract Expressionist artists and what it has to say about culture, society, and gender roles. You have to keep reading to see what’s in the potato barn, and when all is revealed it makes a lot of sense for Vonnegut.

9: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) - So much happens in the book you are riveted as the chapters bounce between characters. An excellent hook grabs you in and doesn’t let you go. Murakami’s imagination runs wild and this strange reinterpretation of oedipus makes you think.

10: Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut) - Newt Hoenikker said it best - “no damn cat, and no damn cradle.”

[justforbooks]

The novelist Christopher Priest, who has died aged 80 after suffering from cancer, became eminent more than once over the nearly 60 years of his active working life. But while he relished success, he displayed a wry reserve about the ambiguities attending these moments in the limelight.

In 1983 he was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, a 20-strong cohort, most of them – such as Martin Amis, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and AN Wilson – significantly younger than Priest, whose career had begun almost two decades earlier, and who had at least 15 books and 50 stories in print by the early 80s. He clearly felt that it was not so much the quality of his work that delayed his “promotion” to the literary establishment, but his reluctance to deny, when asked, that he wrote science fiction.

His large body of work never fitted easily into any mould. Only in recent years has it become widely understood that the sometimes baffling ingenuity and thrust of his fiction has been of a piece, no more detachable into convenient genres than, say, Amis’s or Ishiguro’s tales of the fantastic.

Like them, he wove visions of Britain drifting into a post-empire future without secure signposts. Those stories, and the characters he let loose without a paddle, sink and dodge into realities that no longer count. Lacking much in the way of science-fiction gear, even his early work seems to describe the point that we have now arrived at.

His first novel, Indoctrinaire (1970), jaggedly initiates that scrutiny of a near-future, self-hallucinated Britain that terminated only with his last novel, Airside (2023). His next, much more mature, tale, Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972), is the first of several to envision Britain as islanded both literally and in terms of the traumatic solitude endured by those who live in it. It depicts a land devastatingly isolated by ecological collapse, threatened by uncontrollable waves of the world’s dispossessed. The tale is broken into 69 sections (or islands) in no chronological order.

Inverted World (1974), a brilliantly realised study in how perception can transform a world, and The Space Machine: A Scientific Romance (1976), a wry but genuine homage to HG Wells, step away from his central focus. But in A Dream of Wessex (1977), in some stories from An Infinite Summer (1979), and in a further novel, The Affirmation (1981), he created what he came to call The Dream Archipelago, a sequence of tales set in a variety of similar Britains, all transfigured into differing landscape-dominated worlds, sometimes enjoying a Mediterranean climate, each individual tale following paths into watery labyrinths.

The influence of Richard Jefferies’ After London: Or, Wild England (1885) is clear. The protagonist of The Glamour (1984) is so islanded from reality that he becomes literally invisible.

Born in Cheadle, Cheshire (now Greater Manchester), Christopher was the son of Millicent (nee Haslock) and Walter Priest, a senior executive in the firm of Vandome and Hart, manufacturers of weighing machines. On leaving Cheadle Hulme school at the age of 16, he became an accountancy clerk, work that he was able to leave in 1968. Much later he published the stories he wrote from this period as Ersatz Wines (2008).

The first significant hint of a way forward into his mature vision seems to have come through reading Brian Aldiss’s Non-Stop (1958), a tale whose disruptive questioning of science-fiction conventions borrowed from the US, married to a loud pessimism about humanity’s hopes of dominating any future world, was electrifying.

The boisterous Aldiss soon introduced him to the small but intense literary world in Notting Hill Gate, west London, that Michael Moorcock was beginning to create in the early 60s through the magazine New Worlds.

In an early piece, Priest himself first applied the term New Wave to the experimental fantastic narratives of this era, but was ambivalent about how much he wanted to identify with what he found in New Worlds. He gave up clerical work, began to write full-time, and in 1969 married Christine Merchant. They moved to London and divorced after four years.

The New Worlds/New Wave vision of a world that had lost all sense of itself, with no stories to show a way out, was inspiring: but from the beginning Priest recognised the central influence and mentoring genius of JG Ballard, who made hypnotic stories out of the seemingly unstoryable, for his uncanny intuition that past, present and future were an “inner space” we must explore and live with.

Though his works are formally more ingenious, everything Priest wrote acknowledges his mentor’s foreknowledge that we now live in that inner space, where the lighting is treacherous. His last book, not quite completed at the time of his death, is a study of Ballard.

After the US author Harlan Ellison withdrew one of Priest’s stories from his indefinitely postponed blockbuster anthology Last Dangerous Visions, Priest published The Last Deadloss Visions (1987). It was a ruthless documentation of Ellison’s failure to release this volume, while retaining at least 100 stories, some from as early as 1972, and all the while promising immediate publication (when Ellison died in 2018, the anthology was still in manuscript). Priest treated the vituperation from Ellison’s followers as an inevitable consequence of his honesty, but shrugged it off. Others in the US respected him for speaking out.

In 1981, Priest married Lisa Tuttle; they divorced in 1987. The following year he married the writer Leigh Kennedy, and they had two children, Elizabeth and Simon.

His novel The Prestige (1995), about two feuding 19th-century magicians, won both the James Tait Black Memorial prize and a World Fantasy award. The successful film adaptation by Christopher Nolan (2006) starred Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as the illusionists sparring over a teleportation stunt.

Responding to this new upsurge in his reputation, Priest wrote about the experience in The Magic: The Story of a Film (2008). Meanwhile, The Separation (2002), a dark alternate history of the second world war featuring Rudolf Hess and Winston Churchill, won an Arthur C Clarke award.

He and Kennedy divorced in 2011, and he and the writer Nina Allan began to live together, soon moving to the Isle of Bute. They married in 2023.

His remaining years were prolific. The Islanders (2011) was soon followed by three further and summatory Dream Archipelago tales. An American Story (2018) takes a contrarian view of the assassination of JF Kennedy. Expect Me Tomorrow (2022) plays an intricate game involving doppelgangers, geology and climate change.

His last novel, Airside, conveys with eerie aplomb the seemingly simple tale of a Hollywood star who escapes the potential wreck of her career by travelling through something like an escape-hatch housed in the Heathrow “airside”: an Escherian space, neither here nor there, that any traveller must somehow traverse without becoming abandoned.

The French director Chris Marker’s most famous film, 200 stills comprising the 20-minute La Jetée (1962), which Priest cites in this novel, is partially set in an airside where past and future intersect. The sadness of that intersection is fathoms deep, serenely knowing. The voiceover for that film, and the narrator of Airside, speak to us in the same tone of voice: a tone that seems to grasp the future in hindsight.

At the end of his career, Priest had finally brought off his greatest trick: to bring us home to where he awaited us.

In his written work, he could be acerbic and taxing (though usually persuasive). My own friendship with him, which deepened over half a century, revealed an urgently kind man, witty, loyal, amused, gregarious. He had the rare gift of taking himself fully as seriously as he warranted: but no more. His laughter was infectious.

He is survived by Nina and his children.

🔔 Christopher Mackenzie Priest, author, born 14 July 1943; died 2 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[aberandlime]

Nine People I'd Like To Get To Know Better

Thank you for tagging me @desertfangs. I’ll try to be social and brave and make the second tumblr post of my life

Last Song: Volbeat – Lonesome Rider

Favorite Color: Dark purple. More blue than red but still warm.

Currently Watching: Currently re-watching the X-Files. My fave Krycek just appeared<3

Last Movie/Show: The Gilded Age

Spicy/Savory/Sweet: Sweet – I love sweet things but mixed with savory (sometimes)

Last Thing You Googled: Dhaka - i'm reading Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children and I have to consult Wikipedia for background information occasionally (now the last thing was occasionally, because I wasn’t sure with the spelling)

I tag (but no pressure or obligation of course!!! also i don't know 9 people here): @soitamulle @iwtv-az-hours

[bookquest2024]

100 Books to Read Before I Die: Quest Order

The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Under The Net by Iris Murdoch

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

A Passage to India by EM Forster

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

1984 by George Orwell

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Oscar And Lucinda by Peter Carey

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Ulysses by James Joyce

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Herzog by Saul Bellow

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

A Dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Little Women by Louisa M Alcott

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

Watchmen by Alan Moore

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Money by Martin Amis

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

[mariacallous]

When Carrie Fisher passed away in 2016 at the age of 60, she was remembered as far more than her iconic turn as the girl in the gold bikini. In addition to a prolific acting career, Fisher authored seven books, served as a script doctor for other writers, and always made a point to speak openly on her struggles with addiction and mental illness.

"Books were my first drug. They took me away from everything and I would just consume them."

Often likened to Hollywood’s Dorothy Parker, Fisher harbored a deep love for language. In a 2008 piece for The Week, she provided a list of the books that most influenced her life and work, including classics by George Eliot, Joan Didion and Salman Rushdie. Read on for her favorites.

Middlemarch by George Eliot (also rec’d by Zadie Smith)

“One of the greatest books ever written by a woman, especially in those early days. Although Mary Anne Evans gave herself a male pen name, she showed incredible ambition and scope in her writing—the world she created, the characters she imagined. I love that line in the book that reads: “The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you Hebrew, if you wished it.” It was hard to be a woman in those days, but her storytelling was exceptional.” -CF

Naked by David Sedaris

“This collection of personal essays made me laugh as hard as any book I’ve ever read. I also discovered that I needed glasses when reading this, but still it’s one of the funniest books ever.” -CF

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (also rec’d by St. Vincent)

“I love her use of spare narrative throughout this story about an unfulfilled actress looking for purpose in her life. I admired the style then and have tried to pattern some of my own writing in that fashion.” -CF

My Old Sweetheart by Susanna Moore

“She’s an extremely talented writer. Her first novel, set in the 1950s, is about a woman who grew up with a very eccentric mother, which, of course, is why I related to it.” -CF

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

“I love Salman. He’s a friend of mine, but I loved this book—which allegorically weaves a family’s story with the history of modern India—even before I knew him. I’m just showing off that I know him.” -CF

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

“I’m also showing off that I’ve actually gotten through Swann’s Way, the first volume in Proust’s monumental work In Search of Lost Time. Just getting through those first 100 pages, where he could not fall asleep until his mother kissed him good night, was an achievement alone.” -CF

[dk-thrive]

The good guys don't always win

And we speak of peace now, when war is raging, a war born of one man’s tyranny and greed for power and conquest; and another bitter conflict has exploded in Israel and the Gaza Strip. Peace, right now, feels like a fantasy born of a narcotic smoked in a pipe. Peace is a hard thing to make, and a hard thing to find. And yet we yearn for it, not only the great peace that comes at the end of war, but also the little peace of our private lives, to feel ourselves at peace with ourselves, and the little world around us. It is one of our great values, a thing ardently to pursue…

My fate, over the past many years, has been to drink from the bottle marked Freedom, and therefore to write, without any restraint, those books that came to my mind to write. And now, as I am on the verge of publishing my 22nd, I have to say that on 21 of those 22 occasions, the elixir has been well worth drinking, and it has given me a good life doing the only work I ever wanted to do.

On the remaining occasion, namely the publication of my fourth novel, I learned – many of us learned – that freedom can create an equal and opposite reaction from the forces of unfreedom. I learned, too, how to face the consequences of that reaction, and to continue, as best I could, to be as unfettered an artist as I had always wished to be. I learned, too, that many other writers and artists, exercising their freedom, also faced the forces of unfreedom, and that, in short, freedom can be a dangerous wine to drink.

But that made it more necessary, more essential, more important to defend, and I have done my best, along with a host of others, to defend it. I confess there have been times when I’d rather have drunk the Peace elixir and spent my life sitting under a tree wearing a blissful, beatific smile, but that was not the bottle the pedlar handed me.

We live in a time I did not think I would see, a time when freedom – and in particular, freedom of expression, without which the world of books could not exist – is everywhere under attack from reactionary, authoritarian, populist, demagogic, half-educated, narcissistic, careless voices; when places of education and libraries are subject to hostility and censorship; and when extremist religion and bigoted ideologies have begun to intrude in areas of life in which they do not belong. And there are also progressive voices being raised in favour of a new kind of bien-pensant censorship, one that appears virtuous, and which many people, especially young people, have begun to see as a virtue.

So freedom is under pressure from the left as well as the right, the young as well as the old. This is something new, made more complicated by our new tools of communication, the internet, on which well-designed pages of malevolent lies sit side by side with the truth, and it is difficult for many people to tell which is which; and our social media, where the idea of freedom is every day abused to permit, very often, a kind of online mob rule, which the billionaire owners of these platforms seem increasingly willing to encourage, and to profit by.

What do we do about free speech when it is so widely abused? We should still do, with renewed vigour, what we have always needed to do: to answer bad speech with better speech, to counter false narratives with better narratives, to answer hate with love, and to believe that the truth can still succeed even in an age of lies. We must defend it fiercely and define it broadly. We should of course defend speech that offends us, otherwise we are not defending free expression at all.

— Salman Rushdie, from “The good guys don’t always win” (The Guardian, November 8, 2023)

[betterbooktitles]

My wife and I got married in the Hamptons of Cleveland, a small gated community an hour south of Buffalo called the Chautauqua Institution. A year later, steps from where we had danced to a Beatles cover band, someone stabbed Salman Rushdie. 

I worry Chautauqua will be known for that attack someday. When I tell a friend where we were married, will I see their face change in subtle recognition? Will it become like saying you went to Columbine High School but graduated years before the shooting?

Probably not. The Chautauqua lore is so rich that it’s unlikely to be known for any single event. It’s been praised by the New York Times for being a spiritually and intellectually satisfying retreat, and bashed in the New York Times for its Boys’ and Girls’ Club, the oldest children’s day camp in the country, one that still separates the sexes. 

“Chautauquas,” according to the first few pages of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance once littered the United States. Intellectuals toured the country giving lectures during the Lyceum Movement, an experiment in adult education for the masses. Chautauqua, New York was the flagship community and is also one of the few Chautauquas that has survived.

An entire page of my sophomore American History textbook was devoted to Chautauqua. Writers, politicians, comedians, and essayists all traveled on the lyceum circuit to get their message out to the world. William Jennings Bryan was likely the most exciting speaker, a man who I first heard about in the play Our Town where the Stage Manager excitedly tells the audience that “Bryan once made a speech from these very steps here.” Thanks to my family’s yearly vacations in Chautauqua, I too had seen some steps where Bryan had once made a speech. Exciting stuff. I was walking through a page of my history textbook every summer.

Though I knew the place was somewhat famous, Chautauqua’s history often seemed embellished. Once, a nice white-haired lady walking past me on the road, unprompted, pointed at a patch of grass beyond the institution’s fence and said “You know, Amelia Earhart landed her plane on that golf course once.” Sure she did, lady. Then a few days later, I’d found myself in the Chautauqua library staring at a giant black-and-white photo of Amelia Earhart standing on the Chautauqua golf course. It’s near a few photos of FDR in front of the Chautauqua Opera House. 

It’s difficult to describe Chautauqua to the uninitiated. I happily let my wife describe it for others whenever the subject comes up: “It’s the set of Dirty Dancing.” Aside from the fact that it’s not in the Catskills and the spirit of the place is a little more centered on intellectual/spiritual edification, it is exactly like the set of Dirty Dancing, complete with a treelined lake, an enormous hotel, and a house full of actors and dancers at one end of the grounds who let loose, partying every night to the wee hours (10 PM) when everything in the Institution closes and strict quiet hours are enforced. Women can even take Ballroom Dance classes with young men, though I get the sense that both parties are a little more puritanical than Swayze and his students. Unfortunately, also like the movie, thanks to a few speakers from the Heritage Foundation, there are also several Chautauquans who like Ayn Rand.

For the kids who grew up going to Chautauqua every summer, it was a giant playground. We went during Week Five of the season consistently and became fast friends with anyone our age. Boys’ and Girls’ Club hours went from 9 AM to noon, and from 2 PM to 4 PM so parents could attend talks or a pottery class while the kids were playing dodgeball and rehearsing for Air Band (a lip-syncing competition for all club attendees). Because the Institution is safe compared to nearly every place people visit from, the kids roam free. They have carte blanche to do whatever they please during daylight hours. We biked, ate mountains of ice cream, or played ping pong for hours when we weren’t at club playing GaGa Ball, a game where you hunched over and used your hands to hit your opponents’ ankles with a volleyball.

Read more here.