Friday, October 31, 2025
Thursday, October 30, 2025
First Paragraph
I cannot always see Trieste in my mind's eye. Who can? It is not one of your iconic cities, instantly visible in the memory or the imagination. It offers no unforgettable landmark, no universally familiar melody, no unmistakable cuisine, hardly a single native name that everyone knows. It is a middle-sized, essentially middle-aged Italian seaport, ethnically ambivalent, historically confused, only intermittently prosperous, tucked away at the top right-hand corner of the Adriatic Sea, and so lacking the customary characteristics of Italy that in 1999 some 70 percent of Italians, so a poll claimed to discover, did not know it was in Italy at all.
- From Trieste and The Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Recommended Essayists
You know the version of the conversation game where everyone lists their choice of extraordinary dinner companions. I propose a collection of essayists. You might not always agree with them – in fact, I’m certain you won’t because they’d disagree with one another – but you’ll be in for fine and often highly amusing writing.
I’ll set aside
some well-known powerhouses such as James Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, Joan Didion,
George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, and Tom Wolfe.
Here goes:
Arguably:
Essays by Christopher
Hitchens
Cultural
Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James
Cultural
Cohesion: The Essential Essays
by Clive James
Essays in
Biography by Joseph
Epstein
In a Cardboard
Belt! Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage by Joseph Epstein
Latest
Readings by Clive James
Once More
Around the Block by
Joseph Epstein.
The Ideal of
Culture: Essays by Joseph
Epstein
Things Worth Fighting For: Collected Writings by Michael Kelly
Oxford Union
City Journal: Daniel J. Flynn has some ideas for the newly ousted president-elect of the Oxford Union.
He needs to read Flynn's new book on Frank Meyer.
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
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