Reader's Digest: April 13, 2024
This week, a miscellany of online essays.
In The Atlantic: S. I. Rosenbaum on the violinist Nicholas Kitchen’s attempt to decode Beethoven’s private musical language. If standard notation is “as close as humans have come … to telepathy,” Kitchen aspires to telepathy with a ghost.
In Bookforum: Ann Manov’s ruthless judgement of Lauren Oyler’s essay collection, No Judgment, brings to mind the law of karma, glass houses, pots and kettles: “Oyler clearly wishes to be a person who says brilliant things—the Renata Adler of looking at your phone a lot—but she lacks the curiosity that would permit her to do so.”
In the LA Review of Books: a balanced, appreciative piece by Sarah Moorhouse on Eli Friedlander’s conceptual translation of Walter Benjamin: “Friedlander’s book resembles a work of origami, comprised of separate pieces folded together to create the illusion of a single, intricate form.”
Finally, in the TLS: a lovely piece by Regina Rini on epistemology, and the solar eclipse.