Category: Uncategorized

Forgetting your Why Midway through 2020’s un-precendence, Zadie Smith published a book of personal essays. In one of these, she lays out plainly her reason for writing: I empathize with Zadie Smith when she says later that admitting writing is merely “something to do” smacks of false humility. Of course, these feelings of perceived insincerity must […]

Imagine this common scenario. A teacher is starting a new lesson on some abstract idea — imaginary numbers, angular momentum, Shakespearean prosody, something like that — and a student asks the following question: “Why are we learning this?” You’ve heard this before. You’ve probably asked it before. As an English teacher who teaches novels and plays frequently, I hear […]