Tag: Mark Twain

Goodbye, Norm Macdonald

What all these most profound culture-makers have in common is death-mindedness, which gives them the ability to fully pursue their art, because they don’t pay as much mind to the fleeting: the money, the fame, the critical disapproval.

Civilization, Escape, or Community: Revisiting Into the Wild with Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry pleads with us to see that true joy and fulfillment— the very motivations at the heart of Huck Finn and Christopher McCandless—are to be found not in escape and isolation, but in willing membership and participation in community life.

Hemingway, All Too Human

The new things we learn about Ernest Hemingway in this documentary not only make him more interesting; they make his writing more remarkable.

Teaching Banned Books: Huck Finn

The censorship of slavery no longer dictates Huck’s morality. Unlike Tom, Huck has begun to question his society’s standards, to weigh and consider what is just and right, and I hope that by reading this story, my students may follow him in this difficult endeavor.

Two Literary Journeys

We have, until this day, indulged in our individualistic reveries, imagining that we are always free to “light out for the Territory” and leave the ills of communal life behind us.