Tag: young man
Marilynne Robinson Makes the Book of Genesis New
Marilynne Robinson’s novels always leave me with a visceral impression of celestial light. Heavenly bulbs seem to switch on at climactic moments, showing a world as undimmed as it was at Creation. “I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once,” writes John Ames, the narrator of Gilead, an elderly preacher approaching death as if returning to the birth of being. “And God
A Poem by Greg Delanty: ‘After Viewing the Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne (1847)’
At first glance, Daniel MacDonald’s painting The Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne 1847 seems pretty cheerful. A young man is flinging himself into the toss of a ball, his arm swung back and his feet off the ground. A crowd has gathered around him, eager to watch, perhaps waiting for a chance to play. But 1847 was not a happy year in Cloyne, Ireland; it fell in the middle of the country’s Great Famine, the result of a potato
Readers’ Thoughts on Affirmative Action
Responses from teachers, students, and others on educational equity
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
The week before last I asked readers for their thoughts on the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision.
Replies have been edited for length and clarity.
R. celebrates
A Weekend at the World’s Largest Trivia Competition
Barry Benson tightened his grip on his steering wheel. The federal wildlife-damage-abatement officer had handled bears, coyotes, and wolves. But now he was on a bigger hunt. And he was not alone. At an utterly unassuming, otherwise-bucolic intersection just outside the 280-acre Schmeeckle Reserve in rural Wisconsin, dozens of cars—Benson’s among them—idled in the predawn darkness of 5 a.m., all tuned into the same local radio station, 90 FM, waiting for instructions.
Are Sports Worth the Risks?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Earlier this week, the NFL player Damar Hamlin’s heart stopped on the field after a violent collision with another player; a mountain climber died after an avalanche on Britain’s highest mountain; and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in
Paul LePage’s Comeback Bid – The Atlantic
JAY, Maine—Services at the New Life Baptist Church had just wrapped up, and in the parking lot outside its tiny chapel, Paul LePage was standing behind me with his arm wrapped around my head. He held a cellphone inches from my face, as if he were filming an extreme close-up. The former and perhaps future governor of Maine had insisted on reenacting an incident that had occurred a few weeks earlier, when he’d threatened “to deck” a Democratic operative tracking
The Subversive Power of Romance Novels
One of my most enduring school memories is of an austere English teacher urging us—a class of two dozen 13-year-old girls with all the raging hormones of a Harry Styles arena tour—not to succumb to the books of Jackie Collins. “If you read trash, girls,” she articulated, with icy precision, “you will write trash.” Thinking back on this, all I can summon is: I wish. Collins sold half a billion novels during her life, made more than $100
David Brooks Reconsiders ‘Bobos in Paradise’
This article was published online on August 2, 2021.
The dispossessed set out early in the mornings. They were the outsiders, the scorned, the voiceless. But weekend after weekend—unbowed and undeterred—they rallied together. They didn’t have much going for them in their great battle against the privileged elite, but they did have one thing—their yachts.
During the summer and fall of 2020, a series of boat parades—Trumptillas—cruised American waters in support of Donald Trump. The participants gathered rowdily in