The teacher of 1900, if foolhardy, might stimulate; if foolish, might resist; if intelligent, might balance, as wise and foolish have often tried to do from the beginning; but the forces would continue to educate, and the mind would continue to react. All the teacher could hope was to teach it reaction.

Even there his difficulty was extreme. The most elementary books of science betrayed the inadequacy of old implements of thought. Chapter after chapter closed with phrases such as one never met in older literature:—“The cause of this phenomenon is not understood”; "science no longer ventures to explain causes"; "the first step towards a causal explanation still remains to be taken"; "opinions are very much divided"; "in spite of the contradictions involved"; "science gets on only by adopting different theories, sometimes contradictory." Evidently the new American would need to think in contradictions, and instead of Kant's famous four antinomies, the new universe would know no law that could not be proved by its anti-law.

To educate -- oneself to begin with -- had been the effort of one's life for sixty years; and the difficulties of education had gone on doubling with the coal output, until the prospect of waiting another ten years, in order to face a seventh doubling of complexities, allured one's imagination but slightly. The law of acceleration was definite, and did not require ten years more study except to show whether it held good. No scheme could be suggested to the new American, and no fault needed to be found, or complaint made; but the next great influx of new forces seemed near at hand, and its style of education promised to be violently coercive. The movement from unity into multiplicity, between 1200 and 1900, was unbroken in sequence, and rapid in acceleration. Prolonged one generation longer, it would require a new social mind. As though thought were common salt in indefinite solution it must enter a new phase subject to new laws. Thus far, since five or ten thousand years, the mind had successfully reacted, and nothing yet proved that it would fail to react, -- but it would need to jump.

Henry Adams is worth your time.

A Law of Acceleration | The Education of Henry Adams

It should be clear to anyone who has read Kakutani's reviews that she has an estimable intelligence; she backs this up with what must be many real or virtual all-nighters in which she digests every word ever published by the writer under review. She takes books seriously, a valuable and ever-rarer trait. Furthermore, in my observation, she is more or less right in her judgments most of the time.

Assessing Michiko Kakutani. By Ben Yagoda

I saw this in the Borders print ad today. I hadn't realized this before, but apparently The Baroque Cycle is now being sold as a series of nine (or more?) paperback books. See #4 and #5.

The trials of Dr. Daniel Waterhouse and the Natural Philosophers increase one hundredfold in an England plagued by the impending war and royal insecurities -- as the beautiful and ambitious Eliza plays a most dangerous game as double agent and confidante of enemy kings.

Odalisque : The Baroque Cycle #3, by Neal Stephenson

Edmund Wilson’s books were never widely read. But for upwards of half a century they had an incalculable impact on readers.

Wilson’s intellectual ambitions went far beyond book reviewing. He looked to "general ideas" to place each book in a larger context -- social, biographical, comparative.

Edmund Wilson's human interest

For many years, most of the best writers of the English language found their way to Don Swaim's CBS Radio studio in New York.

The one-on-one interviews typically lasted 30 to 45 minutes and then had to be edited down to a two-minute radio show.

Wired for Books is proud to make these important oral documents publicly available for the first time in their entirety.

Listen to the voices of many of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Here's a sample of the offering:

Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Clive Barker, Carl Bernstein, Judy Blume, Ray Bradbury, William F. Buckley, William Burroughs, Tom Clancy, E.L. Doctorow, James Ellroy, Fred Friendly, Jean-louis Gassee, Allen Ginsberg, Sir Alec Guinness, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elia Kazan, Garrison Keillor, Tracy Kidder, Louis L'Amour, Elmore Leonard, James Michener, Robert Moses, Fred Rogers, Oliver Sacks, William Safire, Susan Sontag, Clifford Stoll, Kurt Vonnegut.

Wired for Books

In English speaking countries, the name Philip Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (1493 - 1541) isn't often heard these days.

In German-speaking lands, however, the name conjures legends, myths, and tall tales of esoteric secrets, like the real nature of the Philosopher's Stone, or the best recipe for a homunculus.

Were a film about Paracelsus to be made today, however, it would have to be based on this excellent biography. Philip Ball's account of this semi-mythical and little-known figure is a pleasure to read, combining a page-turning narrative with brief histories of Renaissance magic, medicine and religious upheaval.

Decay is the midwife of great things

Because I live in a small town where I cross paths with promiscuous book lenders all the time, I have lately taken to hiding in subterranean caverns, wearing clever disguises while concealed in tenebrous alcoves and feigning rare tropical illnesses to avoid being saddled with any new reading material.

I do not avoid books like "Accordion Man" or "Elwood's Blues" merely because I believe that life is too short. Even if life were not too short, it would still be too short to read anything by Dan Aykroyd.

No More Books!

"The serious novel may be in serious decline," he said, asking rhetorically how many in the audience enjoy reading "an egregiously cruel review" of a serious novel more than trying to appreciate the art involved in creating such a work. The purpose of the serious novel, he said, is "to enter one's life, even alter it," but too often such works are in opposition to "the needs of the marketplace."

Garrison Keillor, the host of the ceremony at the New York Marriott Marquis, noted that it was taking place just before another "Harry Potter" film would open in theaters. "Most of us have stood in Barnes & Noble," he said, "and opened a Harry Potter book, read a few pages and said: 'I could have done that. I could have done that while doing all the other things that I do. Why didn't I?'"

On Decline

My whole life, something had buzzed in the back of my head, a yearning that I could not put into words. But now it was taking shape at last. It was telling me that I too was an alien, someone who did not belong in this white house in this small town in the middle of nowhere.

The Boys of Summer

A great one liner: "the pun is the nanotechnology of literature".

Beyond Cyberhype