Louis Menand
Louis Menand
Louis Menandis an American critic and essayist, best known for his book The Metaphysical Club, an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America...
figured hard
He's got everything all figured out. It was hard to get him off track.
unhappy doe earth
It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.
puff stories outcomes
The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.
careers worry people
I do worry a lot about the time it takes for people to get a PhD, about the difficulty of finding employment, about the difficulty of getting tenure, and generally about the perception that undergraduates have, that this is a very high-risk career to get started.
doctors looks want
Basically what you want in any profession - I would say the same thing if I were a lawyer or a doctor - is you want bright undergraduates to look at your profession as something they would be interested in getting into.
lines trends be-kind
Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.
reader hard ifs
It's very hard to know who your readers are, but that's who I'm... if I have somebody in my head, that's probably who it is.
students courses
You have to have students wanting to take the courses, otherwise you're not going, they're not going to be very effective.
fun thinking fields
I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it.
met particular toward warmth
When I met him, I didn't feel a particular warmth toward him.