9 October (1818) John Keats to James Augustus Hessey
I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest—
8 October (1776): John Adams to Abigail Adams
In general, our Generals were outgeneraled on Long Island…
7 October (1948): Wallace Stevens to Thomas McGreevy
The house in which I was born and lived as a boy faced west and wherever I have lived if the house faced any other way I have always been pulling it round on an axis to get it straight…
Review: Thomas Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge”From the Print
Unlike his peers, Mr. Pynchon never started from a set conception of the world, but from the detritus of pop culture, science, and art. He did not plot so much as pattern his novels, setting up complementary and clashing resonances and dichotomies in such a way as to refuse any reductive analysis of the narrative…
4 October (1960): Carl Sandburg to Paula Sandburg
Give this enclosure to whoever shd send me a ballot to mark for JFK—
3 October (1839): Nathaniel Hawthorne to Sophia Peabody
…Now, good night, truest Dove in the world. You will never fly away from me; and it is only the infinite impossibility of it that enables me to sport with the idea…
“A Question of Silence”: Why We Don't Read Or Write About EducationFrom the Print
If in recent years one type of writing has managed to at least hint at the genuine problem in education, it is the adolescent fantasy novel. […] The structuring desire of every novel of this sort is the same: a well-resourced school that offers a meaningful education. The anxiety that eventually takes over the story is also the same: that the school will turn out to be just as authoritarian, just as banal and arbitrary as its real-life counterparts.
“To Get Our Message Before the Public, We’ve Had To Kill People”
During his trial, Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and his fears of technological oppression were deemed “non-bizarre delusions.” Accordingly, Kaczynski’s views received little serious consideration in major media outlets. In recent years, however, his ideas have seen something of a reevaluation.
1 October (1950): Philip Larkin to Monica Jones
I hope too your room doesn’t look sad & lonely now my lethargic cadging figure isn’t in it.
30 September (1941): Eudora Welty to Diarmuid Russell
What you look for in the world is not simply for what you want to know, but for more than you want to know, and more than you can know, better than you had wished for, and sometimes something draws you to a discovery and there is no other happiness quite the same…