Reader's Digest: Thanksgiving, 2022

An old-fashioned title for a newfangled enterprise: expanding my occasional tweets into a newsletter of reading highlights—an electronic commonplace book—with occasional flights of self-promotion.

In the TLS, Guy Dammann wrote about a “masterpiece” of “spectral music” by Kaija Saariaho:

Even we, in the opera’s devastating fallout, must mimic its characters as they try and fail to let go, not to forgive, not to forget, just to remember how to breathe.

Also in the TLS: Peter Thonemann assessed Herodotus as a profession historian, with some reflections on disciplinary difference:

You could write an interesting book on why humour is allowed in some literary genres and not others: academic philosophy makes liberal use of jokes, parody and satire; history-writing, not so much.

In the LRB, Patricia Lockwood reviewed George Saunders’ writing career, including his new collection of stories:

The actors of “Liberation Day” are down-on-their-luck Americans who have agreed to have their pasts erased, …