Alisson Wilkinson in Vox:

Even if you do manage to pick up a book, you might feel lingering guilt if it isn’t an important book, or at least an improving one. “There is no such thing as the correct book to read,” Allison Escoto reminded me over Zoom, a bookcase looming behind her. Escoto is the head librarian and education director at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. The canon of “important books” — what they are, and who gets to choose them — has been in a vibrant state of reexamination and expansion in recent years, she reminded me, and that means the “notion of the correct book, or the right book, or the acceptable book is itself under scrutiny.”

In fact, numerous studies seem to suggest that when it comes to the psychological benefits of reading, just doing it might matter as much or more than the content. Researchers have found that people who spend a few hours per week reading books live longer than those who don’t read, or who read only articles in periodicals; the sustained act of cognition that books demand seems to be the deciding factor. Other research finds a vast array of social-cognitive benefits that come with reading, particularly reading fiction, aiding the brain’s development in understanding others and imagining the world.

Some studies have suggested that reading fiction can increase empathy. But a perhaps even more surprising finding comes from researchers who discovered a short-term decrease in the need for “cognitive closure” in the minds of readers of fiction. In brief, the researchers write, those with a high need for cognitive closure “need to reach a quick conclusion in decision-making and an aversion to ambiguity and confusion,” and thus, when confronted with confusing circumstances, tend to seize on fast explanations and hang on to them. That generally means they’re more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories and poor information, and they become less rational in their thinking. Reading fiction, though, studies have found, tends to retrain the brain to stay open, comfortable with ambiguity, and able to sort through information more carefully.

More here.

Three Cold Mountain Poems

VI

Thirty years in this world
I wandered ten thousand miles,
By rivers, buried deep in grass,
In borderlands, where red dust flies.
Tasted drugs, still not Immortal,
Read books, wrote histories.
Now I’m back at Cold Mountain,
Head in the stream, cleanse my ears.

VIII

I travelled to Cold Mountain:
Stayed here for thirty years.
Yesterday looked for family and friends.
More than half had gone to Yellow Springs.
Slow-burning, life dies like a flame,
Never resting, passes like a river.
Today I face my lone shadow.
Suddenly, the tears flow down.

XIII

Han-shan has his critics too:
‘Your poems, there’s nothing in them!’
I think of men of ancient times,
Poor, humble, but not ashamed.
Let him laugh at me and say:
‘It’s all foolishness, your work!’
Let him go on as he is,
All his life lost making money.

by Han Shan

Noam Maggor in the European Review of Books:

Saint Domingue was the crown jewel of the French empire in the Caribbean when its slaves rebelled in 1791. They formed the independent republic of Haiti in 1804, but the terms of the island’s separation from France was contested long thereafter, and French reconquest loomed. In 1825, in order to secure their sovereignty, the Haitians were forced (in the words of Charles X’s decree) « to compensate the former colonists who may claim an indemnity » for the human property that had been lost. The total sum of these reparations was 150 million golden francs, which the new Caribbean nation funded through a massive loan, paid back slowly over decades. Generations of Haitians – deep into the twentieth century – contributed a significant portion of their livelihood to support the descendants of those who had kidnapped their ancestors from Africa in the hundreds of thousands and forced them to labor under genocidal conditions.

The French aristocrat and intellectual Alexis De Tocqueville is best remembered for his prophetic insights into American democracy, but in 1843 he turned his attention to Haiti. When the indemnity arrangement was again debated in France, Tocqueville declared his unqualified support for the deal, calling it « fair to all participating parties. » Not only would it compensate slaveholders for their lost property, he argued, and restore the social order that had been badly undermined by the rebellion.

More here.

Christopher Lane in Psychology Today:

Almost as soon as it was floated in 1965 by Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Schildkraut, the serotonin hypothesis of depression—reduced and simplified by pharma marketing to the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression and anxiety—has been subject to critical research and found wanting.

The poor standing of the hypothesis in the scientific literature, however, barely dented its afterlife in textbooks, across clinical and treatment settings, and on mental health apps and websites. Nor has it dispelled the continued use of the phrase as “shorthand” between doctors and patients and in everyday settings, including for quite different mental states and conditions.

More here.

Robert Lempert in Noema Magazine:

Term limits or other reforms to the composition of the court seem worthy but would be slow-acting at best and do not solve the fundamental problem: that, on occasion, constitutional interpretation necessarily requires value-laden and not purely legal judgments.

Citizens’ assemblies, a new innovation in governance, may provide an answer. Similar in some ways to a jury, a citizens’ assembly is a body formed from randomly selected citizens who engage in structured deliberations that recognize multiple viewpoints, then move to consensus on important issues. Such assemblies differ from juries in having more participants, more structured deliberative processes and an ability to summon experts to inform them.

More here.

Ian Rose at JSTOR Daily:

One hundred years ago, in 1922, the American musician and scholar W. B. Olds contributed to this debate with “Bird-Music,” an essay whose very title itself demonstrates his position. Olds makes the case that not only is birdsong music, but it’s uniquely beautiful and powerful. To him, each species of bird is a star in its own right, and he gives special mention to a few common American birds; the field sparrow’s song is “a perfect accelerando,” while the song of the white-throated sparrow compels him to ask, “Where is there to be heard a finer legato or more definite rhythm?” Above all, Olds seems most inspired by the tiny ruby-crowned kinglet: “It seems scarcely believable that such a cascade of sparkling tones, extremely high in pitch but wonderfully clear, could proceed from so small a throat. The musician who has not heard it has something to live for.”

more here.

Cynthia Haven at The Book Haven:

Grief is painful. We all know that. But Is there a “good grief”? Eminent essayist and man of letters Joseph Epstein discusses grief, theoretically and from personal experience, including the devastating loss of his son by opioid overdose, as well as departed relatives and friends in his essay, “Good Grief” in Commentary. Like him, I haven’t experienced the legendary “five states of grief,” which I see as an attempt to organize and manage grief, which is by its nature tormenting, chaotic, unpredictable.

Socrates argued that we should keep death foremost in our minds, and that our inevitable deaths will goad us to live better lives. “But no one has told us how to deal with the deaths of those we love or found important to our own lives. Or at least no one has done so convincingly,” he writes. A few excerpts:

Like death itself, grief is too manifold; it comes in too many forms to be satisfactorily captured by philosophy or psychology. How does one grieve a slow death by, say, cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s; a quick death by heart attack, stroke, choking on food, car accident; death at the hands of a criminal, which in our day is often a random death; death at a person’s own hands by suicide; death in old age, middle age, childhood; death in war; yes, death by medicine tragically misapplied. Grief can take the form of anger, even rage, deep sorrow, confusion, relief; it can be long-lived, short-term, almost but never quite successfully avoided. The nature of grief is quite as highly variegated as its causes.

more here.

Jerome Groopman in The New Yorker:

It wasn’t until my mid-forties that I began to write about the world of medicine. Before that, I was busy building a career as a hematologist-oncologist: caring for patients with blood diseases, cancer, and, later, aids; establishing a research laboratory; publishing papers; training junior physicians. A doctor’s workload tends to crowd out everything but the most immediate concerns. But, as the years pass, the things you’ve pushed to the back of your mind start to pile up, demanding to be addressed. For two decades, I had seen my patients and their loved ones face some of life’s most uncertain moments, and I now felt driven to bear witness to their stories.

After writing and revising three chapters of what I envisioned as my first book, I showed a draft to my wife, an endocrinologist. She read them, and then looked at me squarely. “They’re awful,” she said. I was taken aback. I’d felt pretty good about what I had produced. “They’re overwritten, with run-on sentences, filled with fancy words,” she explained. I stayed silent, absorbing her criticism. “I can’t really figure out what you’re trying to say here.”

I reread my words and concluded that she was right. What’s more, I realized that many of the problems with my draft reflected the conditioning that occurs during medical training. I had used technical jargon, as if communicating with colleagues, rather than addressing a general reader. And I had removed myself from the stories, a result of the psychological distancing needed to remain steady while helping a patient coping with a life-threatening disease. Finally, I’d focussed on the clinical details of the cases, instead of exploring patients’ emotional and spiritual dilemmas—the very thing that had moved me to write in the first place.

More here.

Gala

……… One evening the summer sun isn’t enough

We, poets from the South & West, in the US sense of the words,
and the East, in the global sense, walked through a blade of Vermont,
in sunglasses, in lace-up boots, in zigzag, in jeans, commenting on

……… a beauty so murderous and magical it emancipated
some of us hundreds of years ago, for us to hear, You should feel lucky
to be in this country. One of us looks out at the rows of yellow flowers
and says, Can you imagine arriving at land like this, thinking, How beautiful—

I’m going to take it? Which reminded me of another friend, this time in Paris,
looking around its gilded splendor to say, Look what Empire is capable of.

Which reminded me of another friend, this one from Paris, looking down
at Seoul from a gold observatory to say, It’s kind of ugly. & it felt as if he had said I am.

One evening of summer in Vermont,
we are beauty in sunglasses and embroidery and flower crown and plaid, cocktails,
our languages in our hands. Delicious & loud. We are at a gala
for writers. What does “gala” even mean, one of us asks,
to which another one says, I think it’s a kind of party, to which
the first one says, No, motherfucker, I want the etymology. & we flare in laughter.

Two years later I consult The Online Etymology Dictionary to see gala (n.) 
1620s, “festive dress or attire” (obsolete), from French en gala,
perhaps from Old French gale “merriment,” from galer “rejoice, make merry” (see gallant).

Read more »

Gabriel Pokin in Science:

CHILE’S VILLARRICA NATIONAL PARK—As a motley medley of mycologists climbed the basalt slopes of the Lanín volcano earlier this year, the green foliage at lower elevations gave way to autumnal golds and reds. Chile’s famed Araucaria—commonly called monkey puzzle trees—soon appeared, their spiny branches curving jauntily upward like so many cats’ tails. Beneath the majestic trees, the scientists were focused on something far less glamorous—indeed, mostly invisible: mycorrhizal fungi, tiny organisms that intertwine with roots of the Araucaria and nearly all the other plants in this forest. The multinational research team had come to collect soil samples they hoped would, with help from DNA testing, reveal exactly which fungi live here, and how they support this complex assemblage of flora. By the end of an exhausting day that included bushwhacking through heavy brush, the fungi hunters had filled seven small plastic sacks with dirt from different locations. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 100 undescribed species” of fungi in each bag, said mycologist Giuliana Furci, founder of the Chilean nonprofit Fungi Foundation and one of the expedition leaders.

The April ascent was also a road test of sorts: the first of many surveys that the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), a new fungus-focused nonprofit, hopes to conduct. It has raised some $3.5 million for an ambitious effort to map the global distribution of mycorrhizal fungi, which can create subterranean networks that are thought to play a key, but often overlooked, role in shaping ecosystems. “Up to 50% of the living biomass of soils are these networks,” says ecologist Toby Kiers of VU Amsterdam, a co-founder of SPUN and one of the leaders of the Chile expedition. “We have to figure out where they are and what they’re doing.”

More here.

Brian D. Earp in New Humanist:

For many generations in societies shaped by Christianity, monogamy has been the almost undisputed champion of relationship norms. In Britain and the US, it has been held up as the dominant – really the only – ideal for serious romantic partnerships, toward which all of us should always be striving. According to the authors of a 2019 article in Archives of Sexual Behavior, focused on the US context, a “halo surrounds monogamous relationships . . . monogamous people are perceived to have various positive qualities based solely on the fact they are monogamous.” Other relationship models, or even just being persistently single, have often been seen as suspect, if not morally wrong.

Things are starting to change, though. Progressives, at least, increasingly exhibit a greater open-mindedness about intimate pairings that are not expected to be exclusive. There is growing awareness of alternatives to monogamy, such as polyamory: roughly, valuing or engaging in more than one sexual or romantic relationship at a time.

More here.

Lea Booth in Quillette:

Germans call it Energiewende (“energy transition”), and they aim to decarbonize their economy and lead the world by replacing their fossil fuel and nuclear plants with renewable energy. Germany is the first major nation to undertake such an effort, and, as hoped for, their early adoption of renewables has catalyzed a spectacular drop in costs for those technologies. A reporter summed up German attitudes towards the Energiewende, writing, “Germans would then at last feel that they have gone from being world-destroyers in the 20th century to world-saviors in the 21st.”

The Energiewende gained legislative support in 2010, and Germany spent nearly 202 billion euros on renewable energy projects from 2013 to 2020. Since 2010, the share of German electricity generation that has come from solar and wind power has risen from 8 percent to 31 percent, no small feat.

Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare critical weaknesses in German energy policy. Before the war in Ukraine, Germany received 55 percent of its natural gas imports from Russia. While that percentage has fallen since the war began, the European Union chose not to ban Russian gas imports because gas is so crucial to EU nations like Germany. Unsurprisingly, Putin has been using Russia’s gas flows to exert influence over Germany and the EU.

More here.

Martha Bayles in The Hedgehog Review:

Published in 1953, The Captive Mind remains possibly the best book ever written about the lure and trap of totalitarian ideology. In his riveting collection of linked essays, the great poet Czesław Miłosz probed the motivations of Polish writers and intellectuals (Miłosz, at one time, included) who joined the Communist regime after World War II. The rewards of the book begin with its epigraph, which Miłosz attributes to “An Old Jew of Galicia”:

When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.¹

Where Miłosz found this epigraph, I cannot say. But it resonates today, in large part because the old Jew he quotes is from Galicia, the medieval name for a region stretching from eastern Poland to western Ukraine, whose principal city, Lviv, is now overflowing with refugees fleeing a scorched-earth invasion ordered by a twenty-first-century fanatic claiming to be 100 percent right.

More here.

Beatrice Loayza at The Current:

In the first half of her career, Delphine Seyrig seemed to float above reality. To watch her in films by Alain Resnais and Luis Buñuel is to feel hypnotized, to be compelled to reach out and touch her, only to grasp at thin air. It was not until almost fifteen years into her life in the spotlight that she was brought down to earth, by her stripped-down performance as the widowed housewife and part-time prostitute in Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). That role helped unshackle the actor from her ethereal persona, but it was her second collaboration with the Belgian filmmaker that truly set her free.

In the effervescent and bittersweet shopping-mall romance Golden Eighties, Seyrig plays another Jeanne—Jeanne Schwartz, a Jewish woman who runs a clothing store. Like Dielman, the character is a dutiful mother to a self-absorbed young man.

more here.

Barnaby Crowcroft at Literary Review:

In Arabia Through the Looking Glass, when he wasn’t comparing everything to Alice in Wonderland, Jonathan Raban likened his experiences in the Gulf States at the height of the 1970s oil boom to passing through a ‘time loop’ into Britain at the heyday of the Industrial Revolution. Today – in polite academic circles, at least – it would constitute a major faux pas to compare the societies of the Middle East with those at some earlier stage of Western historical development. Yet, forty years on, one gains a strikingly similar impression from John McManus’s picture of life in 21st-century Qatar, from the outsized ambition, the extraordinary rate of economic growth and the transformation of the urban environment to the dreadful working conditions, the open racial hierarchies and the persistence of traditional rentier elites. To venture ‘inside Qatar’ in 2022, as McManus puts it, is to get a ‘glimpse of life at the coalface of globalisation’.

more here.

April White in Slate:

Flora Bigelow Dodge had not traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in January 1903 for the same reason so many women of her acquaintance had. She did not do anything for the same reason other women did—at least not if you believed the newspapers. A fixture in the society pages, Flora was the “most daring, most original, cleverest woman in New York.” She was a wonderful musician, a graceful dancer, an expert horsewoman, and a captivating storyteller, an author of plays and short stories. She was “both courageous and imaginative.” She was witty, ambitious, generous, and beautiful, a woman of “unusual individuality” with a retinue of admirers.

She was also unhappy.

After 16 years of marriage to Charlie Dodge, son of the Dodge family, well-known for its lumber and mining fortune, 34-year-old Flora wanted a divorce—one which would be denied to her in her home state of New York unless she could furnish proof of adultery. And so she traveled west to join the “divorce colony,” as newspapermen called the sorority of dissatisfied wives who moved to South Dakota at the turn of the twentieth century to take advantage of the laxest divorce laws in the country.

More here.