How the Bill of Rights displaced the Constitution: “Today most Americans assume Congress can do whatever the Bill of Rights doesn't forbid. The Bill of Rights has become ‘the heart of the Constitution,’ the only part that is regularly taught or is familiar to most citizens, completely eclipsing the body of the Constitution and its structural safeguards of liberty.”
The wit and wisdom of Dr. Johnson: “Wracked by self-disgust, Johnson is not an obvious self-help guide. But he has much to teach us — including about how not to act or think.”
Without both war and peace, there would be no GPS: The effort to map the entire world required cooperation between countries and, therefore, peace. War led to “the assignment of precise mathematical coordinates to exact spots on earth — very useful for bombing and artillery.”
The critique of Takashi Murakami’s kitsch.
The last cowboys: How ranchers in the West survive on their rodeo winnings.
What Robinson Jeffers can teach us today: “The age of opioids (among other contaminations) suggests a look back at the odd Robinson Jeffers, and at what he said in his poems—and at his cranky and ruthless life as a semi-solitary poet living on what was then a wild stretch of the central California coast.”
Essay of the Day:
How to be serious in a time of absurdity? This is a question that preoccupies Lionel Shriver, James Campbell writes, in both her fiction and nonfiction:
“While not lacking in confidence, she nonetheless admits that the public criticism has nibbled deleteriously at her sense of duty as a novelist and led to inner confusion on the question of self-censorship. ‘She has become embattled over the years,’ says Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator. Nelson invited her to step in last year when a previous columnist left. ‘It was a moonshot name on our list. I was delighted when she accepted.’ He cannot think of any other contemporary novelist who could fulfill the role of pugnacious columnist, jabbing at liberal pieties, as successfully as she does. ‘She is very topical. Her latest novel, The Mandibles, for example, tackles issues like cryptocurrency and has an astonishing grasp of economics. It’s also hilarious. In addition to her intellectual qualities, she brought to the Spectator an elegance of expression.’
“Nelson reaches for the pleasing phrase ‘a gentle fearlessness’ to describe Shriver’s public stances, but she herself occasionally wonders if she ought to be watching her step. Will her career as a novelist suffer if she steps across one newly drawn line too many? ‘Unless I push back against my own prudence,’ she wrote in an essay on the subject of cultural appropriation in the British magazine Prospect in March, ‘my fictional worlds will fail to reflect the world I live in. My literary palate will pale.’ Shriver’s editor in New York, Gail Winston of HarperCollins, admires her for holding her ground. ‘We are mired in a historical moment that is obsessed with cultural appropriation, microaggressions, safe spaces—for better and for worse—so anyone who takes a firm position on these matters leaves themselves open to criticism. Lionel has to stay true to herself.’
“Rising to the call to do what she believes she does best, Shriver wrote a story called ‘Domestic Terrorism’ in 2016. The locale is Atlanta. The cast includes Harriet, ‘on the threshold of sixty,’ her ‘socially awkward’ son Liam, and Liam’s African-American girlfriend Jocanda, one of Shriver’s many skillfully drawn youthful creations. Jocanda has ‘mighty powers,’ not only in Liam’s bedroom but even while reclining on Harriet’s sofa, ‘eyeing her hostess through the roseate glow of her Negroni—a cocktail whose name made Harriet anxious.’
“It is a comic touch in keeping with the tone of the story, which is transmitted through Harriet’s concerned and caring mind. To any goodwilled reader, it is evident that the author feels as attached to Jocanda as Harriet does. But goodwill is the primary instinct of fewer readers than was once the case. When Shriver sent ‘Domestic Terrorism’ to her agent, with the aim of having it submitted to a magazine ‘that had published me in the past,’ the response she got was that ‘maybe I’d like to make Jocanda white.’”
Photos: Venice
Poem: Edward Hirsch, “The Unveiling”
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