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Essays that have changed the way you think

post #1 of 34
1/2/10 at 5:40pm
Thread Starter 
Good Readers and Good Writers--Vladimir Nabokov
The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry--Laurence Perrine
Education by Poetry--Robert Frost
The Figure a Poem Makes--Robert Frost
On Grief and Reason--Joseph Brodsky
Settling the Colonel's Hash--Mary McCarthy
Politics and the English Language--George Orwell
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post #2 of 34
1/2/10 at 5:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wmmk View Post
Good Readers and Good Writers--Vladimir Nabokov

His "On Translation" essay about Eugene Onegin is great, and his hilarious definitive "Philistines and Philistantism" essay is perfectly apt for SF.

"They like their oranges orange..."
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post #3 of 34
1/2/10 at 5:52pm
A few months back, StephenHero set me straight on the merits of NASA and space exploration. He hasn't quite got me on board yet about colonizing Mars, but then again I'd rather not provoke him, because he just might do it.
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post #4 of 34
1/2/10 at 7:01pm
"Some of your friends are probably already this fucked." Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music" -
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
(which is basically prehistoric now, lol)

Joan Didion, "Why I Write" - "I would try to read linguistic theory and would find myself wondering instead if the lights were on in the bevatron up the hill. When I say that I was wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron you might immediately suspect, if you deal in ideas at all, that I was registering the bevatron as a political symbol, thinking in shorthand about the military-industrial complex and its role in the university community, but you would be wrong. I was only wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron, and how they looked."

The preface to Walter Pater's Renaissance
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post #5 of 34
1/2/10 at 7:54pm
The Ph.D Octopus - William James Labor, Leisure, and Liberal Education - Mortimer J. Adler (I can't find the exact essay online but everything I've read here was worth reading. You can refer to "The Ideas of Work and Leisure" instead) On Reading - Henry David Thoreau On Teaching the Appreciation of Poetry - T. S. Eliot Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation - Josef Pieper Of What Use the Classics Today? - Jacques Barzun The Classic Spirit - Kenyon Cox
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post #6 of 34
1/2/10 at 8:37pm
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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post #7 of 34
1/2/10 at 8:41pm
The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin.
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post #8 of 34
1/2/10 at 9:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by howlingwolfpress View Post
On Teaching the Appreciation of Poetry - T. S. Eliot

+1, Willie, I saw this thread and started digging through all of my papers from the whole semester, I passed out with my face in this essay. Will send you some more recs sometime soon.
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post #9 of 34
1/2/10 at 9:16pm
de Montaigne - On Repentance
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post #10 of 34
1/2/10 at 11:32pm
Many of Bertrand Russell's essays. Several Carl Sagan essays (more articles, I guess) really gave me a new appreciation for science.
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post #11 of 34
1/2/10 at 11:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Connemara View Post
Many of Bertrand Russell's essays. Several Carl Sagan essays (more articles, I guess) really gave me a new appreciation for science.

This was... what... two weeks ago?
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post #12 of 34
1/2/10 at 11:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Connemara View Post
Several Marquis de Sade essays (more novellas, I guess) really gave me a new appreciation for m2m sodomy.
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post #13 of 34
1/2/10 at 11:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tagutcow View Post
This was... what... two weeks ago?
No I read my first Sagan book last month but I read some of his stuff a year or two ago.
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post #14 of 34
1/3/10 at 3:17am
The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics -- Philip E Converse
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post #15 of 34
1/3/10 at 3:31am
Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
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