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Writing
A Different World
The Sexual Politics of Ursula Le Guin
There is much to admire in these novels beyond the brilliance of their central conceptions. Their style is vivid but simple, utterly unpretentious, with the kind of transparency that reveals ideas in all their clarity. I can’t remember when I have done reading that is so satisfactory on an emotional level — telling a story I want to hear — and also on an intellectual level, provoking hours of thought beyond what the books even dealt with.
December 1984Sunbeams
October 1984Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave.
Telling The Truth
An unannounced visit, a four-year-old makeup artist, a dead parrot
October 1984Scott and Helen Nearing: A Tribute
Self-reliance has been linked with democracy in the American mind since Thomas Jefferson extolled the small farmer as the cornerstone of a free society. Thoreau sang of similar values. In our day, Scott and Helen Nearing have epitomized the best of that tradition.
July 1984The Perils Of Publishing
Finally after a go ’round, she blurted out: “Doug, I’ve been working at the Library of Congress for twelve years, and I’ve never had an experience like this before.” I just wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
May 1984Returning To Beauty
An Interview With James Applewhite
Building the pyramids or Chartres cathedral are not totally reasonable endeavors — to spend all this money and time and effort and lives in some cases, piling up beautifully cut stone, and yet it’s what gives the grandeur to human existence. It makes humanity in society have something of the brilliance of the light shafting down from the stars.
May 1984
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