[{"id":311106,"date":"2026-09-08T14:45:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311106"},"modified":"2026-09-08T10:48:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:48:27","slug":"terry-eagleton-brings-his-vast-reading-to-bear-on-lifes-most-inescapable-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/terry-eagleton-brings-his-vast-reading-to-bear-on-lifes-most-inescapable-fact.html","title":{"rendered":"Terry Eagleton brings his vast reading to bear on life\u2019s most inescapable fact"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"T<\/span>erry Eagleton is not a fan of sloppy thinking, especially when it comes to the granite fact of death. He particularly doesn\u2019t like the attitude of\u00a0Dylan Thomas<\/a>\u00a0who famously urged his ailing father to \u201cnot go gentle into that good night\u201d. If the \u201cnight\u201d \u2013 death \u2013 is so \u201cgood\u201d then why, asks Eagleton reasonably, would Thomas want his dad to dawdle? Shouldn\u2019t DJ Thomas, rather, be encouraged to trot towards his lovely end like an ecstatic marathon runner on the home straight?<\/p>\n

Eagleton\u2019s reproach to Thomas\u2019s doublethink should not be read as panicky denial about the reality of his\u00a0own mortality. To the contrary, Eagleton, who at 83 admits that he wasn\u2019t sure whether this book would end up being published posthumously, finds it hard to think or write about much else. After a 60-year academic career spent tussling with Marxist literary theory, not to mention the epistemological void at the heart of\u00a0postmodernism criticism, these days Eagleton is more interested in pondering death and how it \u201clacks a\u00a0sense of occasion\u201d. It might visit, for\u00a0example, while you happen to be dressed in a giraffe outfit.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian: Terry Eagleton is not a fan of sloppy thinking, especially when it comes to the granite fact of death. He particularly doesn\u2019t like the attitude of\u00a0Dylan Thomas\u00a0who famously urged his ailing father to \u201cnot go gentle into that good night\u201d. If the \u201cnight\u201d \u2013 death \u2013 is so \u201cgood\u201d then…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311106"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311109,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311106\/revisions\/311109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311101,"date":"2026-09-08T12:45:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T16:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311101"},"modified":"2026-09-08T10:38:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:38:51","slug":"is-the-musical-scale-we-grew-up-with-dictated-by-physics-or-is-it-something-we-just-got-used-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/is-the-musical-scale-we-grew-up-with-dictated-by-physics-or-is-it-something-we-just-got-used-to.html","title":{"rendered":"Is the musical scale we grew up with dictated by physics, or is it something we just got used to?"},"content":{"rendered":"