Expanding Eyes: The Newsletter

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What is the use of nostalgia, this yearning over the vanished past, this clinging to what is gone and will not come again? On Mother’s Day, I stood over…
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My theme this week is “possession,” which may strike some readers as off the beaten path. But it is actually as timely as the day’s headlines—pretty…
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Here there be dragons. According to a common piece of folklore, that inscription appears at the margins of maps in the olden days. What it really…
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A few days ago, a former student, an English major just graduated in December, wrote to me asking a question I am repeatedly asked, and for 33 years…
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Last week I raised the issue of the frequent, sometimes intense disapproval of popular storytelling in our time: of the “category fiction” that sells…
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Last week, at a concert, an amiable parking lot attendant thanked us for being more pleasant to deal with than his previous customer. He offered no…
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This newsletter will appear on Christmas Eve Day, so of course it’s going to be about Christmas, despite the obviousness of the choice. In fact, I’m…
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Suddenly, it is October. How is that possible? Summer is always gone too soon for me. But here we are in the week of the birthday, on October 27, of the…
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We seem to be witnessing a reluctant acknowledgment of inwardness. In 2012, Susan Cain revived the debate over introversion and extraversion with her…
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Revenge may seem an odd choice of topic for a newsletter on imagination. What does revenge have to do with the imagination? But the answer is…
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In the previous newsletter, I quoted the great fantasist Ursula Le Guin’s disparaging remarks about what is commonly called formula fiction or category…
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Last week, I wrote about the role that chance plays in our lives, for better or worse. Chance obligingly proceeded to provide me with examples. A writer…
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© 2022 Michael Dolzani
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