Author: Andrew Taggart

• June 17, 2011

  Innisfree ho

  I awoke this morning and there in my ear was the first line of Innisfree: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.” O, Yeats, as the hammer pounds down, the taxis swerve, and the summer gets thick with ire, I’ll join you there in Innisfree, and there, my friend, we’ll listen to…
• June 15, 2011

  A writer’s life

  O, give me but sun and wind and trees so that I may work till dark. Ah, there we are.
• June 14, 2011

  Venkat on the life and death of the corporation

  In “A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600-2100,” Venkat examines the 3 phases of the corporate form: maximum power (years 1600-1800), maximum reach (1800-1980), and slow death (1980 and afterward). Strikingly  he writes, The Age of Corporations is coming to an end. The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center…
• June 13, 2011

  Nihilism in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

  On the one hand, Jonathan Franzen does a masterful job of showing how unchecked freedom leads of necessity to nihilism. The ability to choose this or that cannot of itself answer to the more fundamental question, “Why bother choosing in the first place? What makes one item more valuable than the other? And, for that…
• June 10, 2011

  On lectio divina – day 2

  Suppose you were to approach a book the way you do wine. To begin with, you’d be careful in your selection. After all, the thing’s going in your mouth and down your gullet. Once you’ve selected something palatable, you’d let it breathe, take it in, sit with it for a while, give it time. And…