A critic can recommend a book that changed him. What he cannot do is recommend, at scale and in advance, the book that would change him next — because what a critic sells is continuity of criteria, and that book's whole function is to break them. This isn't a complaint about any particular paper. It's … Continue reading The Book Nobody Can Recommend
Tag: cultural criticism
The Same Paper: On Love, Control & the Limits of the Outside View
I once said, in a public argument about a book that advocated for divorce, that if I found my wife reading it we would have a conversation about it. My wife is a surgeon and the family breadwinner; the idea that I could control her is faintly comic to anyone who knows us. None of … Continue reading The Same Paper: On Love, Control & the Limits of the Outside View
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