Thomas Farber, senior lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley, has a new collection of epigrammatic epistles coming out in August: Foregone Conclusions. In the afterword to the book, Farber writes: “Humor. Writing and rewriting these spars and catarrhs, I often laughed. Because of wordplay, of course. But also because I was turning moral blindness, often my own, into recognition of the distance between error and self-knowledge, self-image and fact. If the epigrammist appears to presume himself superior to others, of course he’s implicated in all he perceives. As, when children, insulted, we’d retort, ‘Takes one to know one.’” For some of Farber’s conclusions that have gone before on this blog, click here and here.

Monogamy, so you can each focus on food.

The last two centuries. From village community (gemeinschaft) to atomistic capitalism (gesellschaft). From see to c.c.

Sleepless: nocternity.

When not repeating itself, history stutters.

He found it harder to distinguish between things intended and things done.

If the old ask, “Which way?” graciously explain, “Dead ahead.”