Month: March 2012

• March 2, 2012

  If winter didn’t come, would spring or fall appear?

  My review essay of Adam Gopnik’s Winter: Five Windows on the Season (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2011) can be read now or, pending that, fairly soon at Writing in Public. The book is comprised of a set of five lectures that Gopnik, a longtime New Yorker writer, Montreal native, and NYC denizen, delivered on CBC Radio in November…
• March 1, 2012

  Friends as fellow travelers; or, the art of saying farewell

  The following is a spiritual exercise (ascesis) in the art of saying farewell. The former friend whom I’m addressing in the letter has an extensive background in music, physics, and philosophy, has a prestigious academic pedigree, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. We first met only days after I moved to NYC, a…