Tag Archives: George Eliot

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 18, 2023

R. Kikuo Johnsons “Bodega Cat”

The New Yorker – September 18, 2023 issue: The new issue features R. Kikuo Johnson’s “Bodega Cat”, where the the artist discusses pivotal moments and his relationship to pets.

Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion

Ross Douthat photographed by Adam Pape.

At a time of distrust and polarization, the conservative Times columnist seeks to bridge the worlds of the Christian right and the secular left.

By Isaac Chotiner

This summer, Ross Douthat, liberal America’s favorite conservative commentator, wrote a piece about liberal America’s least favorite Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Douthat argued in his New York Times column that an unwillingness to debate Kennedy—who has claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism, that 5G networks are part of a mass-surveillance system, and that covid was designed to spare Jewish and Chinese people—was an insufficient response to voters who are increasingly distrustful of the establishment. 

What Kate DiCamillo Understands About Children

Painting of Kate DiCamillo.

Her books for young readers have sold more than forty-four million copies. They are full of yearning, loneliness, ambivalence, and worry.

By Casey Cep

Three winters in a row, Kate DiCamillo went into the hospital, never sure if she would come home and always a little scared to do so. One of those winters, when she was four years old and the air outside was even colder than the metal frames of the oxygen tents she’d grown accustomed to having above her bed, her father came to see her. He was wearing a long black overcoat, which made him look like a magician. “I brought you a gift,” he said, pulling something from his pocket as if from a top hat.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 11, 2023

Office space and mall.

The New Yorker – September 11, 2023 issue: The new issue features Dana Goodyear on editing humans with crispr, Elizabeth Kolbert on decoding whale communication, James Wood on George Eliot, and more.

The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing

Hands cutting DNA with a pair of scissors. Growth of a human baby is displayed in the background.

A rogue scientist showed that crispr gives humans the ability to transform ourselves. But should we?

By Dana Goodyear

Crispr, which may be the single most transformative biological technology of the twenty-first century, is a natural phenomenon, evolved over billions of years. It was first observed in the nineteen-eighties, when researchers noticed unexplained sequences of viral DNA in E. coli. Eventually, they realized that these sequences played a role in the bacteria’s immune system: they could find and destroy other pieces of viral DNA. 

The Holy Heresies of George Eliot

Two people lying with their faces close to each other with their long hair flowing over an open book

Her greatest rebellion against Victorian moralism was to reclaim the sacred for herself.

By James Wood

Literature bores me, especially great literature,” the narrator of one of John Berryman’s “Dream Songs” says. George Eliot sometimes bores me, especially the George Eliot draped in greatness. Think of the extremities of nineteenth-century fiction: labile Lermontov; crazy, visionary Melville; nasty, world-hating Flaubert; mystic moor-bound Brontës; fanatical, trembling Dostoyevsky; explosive Hamsun. There’s enough wildness to destroy the myth of that stable Victorian portal “classic realism.” It was not classic—certainly not then—and not always particularly “real.”

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement-March 17, 2023

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Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (March 17, 2023) –

This week’s @TheTLS, featuresJaqueline Banerjee on George Eliot’s double life; Paul Collier on capitalism and democracy; @djtaylorwriter on Inez Holden; @BoydTonkin on Klint and Strindberg; @irinibus on ballet – and more.

Book Review Podcasts: “In Love With George Eliot” By Kathy O’Shaughnessy (BBC)

Kathy O'Shaughnessy In Love With George EliotKathy O’Shaughnessy talks to Mariella about her novel charting the life of George Eliot.

Who was the real George Eliot? In Love with George Eliot is a glorious debut novel which tells the compelling story of England’s greatest woman novelist as you’ve never read it before.

Marian Evans is a scandalous figure, living in sin with a married man, George Henry Lewes. She has shocked polite society, and women rarely deign to visit her. In secret, though, she has begun writing fiction under the pseudonym George Eliot. As Adam Bede’s fame grows, curiosity rises as to the identity of its mysterious writer. Gradually it becomes apparent that the moral genius Eliot is none other than the disgraced woman living with Lewes.

Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07tf569