So You Think You Might Be A Writer? Just because you write? An astute essay by Joseph Epstein poses the uncomfortable question: are you weird enough? There's something very unnatural and unhealthy about writing (as opposed to reading, for instance) - but what is it? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Apr 19, 2004 - 51 comments

Is Current Israeli Policy Incompatible With Judaism? Jonathan Sacks, Britain's Chief Rabbi and arguably the outstanding Jewish intellectual of his generation, has apparently broken away from the established stance of Orthodox Judaism and made public a series of worries and reservations that rabbis have been making privately ever since Sharon took power. It's not so much politics (though everything is) that is at stake but the dissonance between the highly peaceful (indeed anti-military) and human character of Judaism and the hard, secular realism of present-day Israeli politics. Are they becoming irreconcilable? Were they always so?[Jonathan Freedland, who interviewed Professor Sacks, had this to say about the bigger picture.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Aug 27, 2002 - 103 comments

If You Take A Book With You, You Travel Twice Over This pleasant essay by Alain de Botton had me thinking what the perfect combination of a book, a destination and a way of travelling would be...
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jul 4, 2002 - 19 comments

Is McSweeney's Sounding More And More Like Random House? Or is it just me? As a lifetime subscriber and fan of David Eggers, I'm sickened by the glib, shameless commercialism that now contaminates what was once an interesting website for new writers. What in the hell has happened? Or is the new book-peddling climate just another tiresome take on post-post-post modernism or, more likely, just blatant PR? (Latest example inside)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 29, 2001 - 19 comments