Nonfiction
Follow the Red Dirt Road: Some Thoughts on Being a Southern Writer
My friend, colleague, and fellow native Alabamian, Gary Walker, wrote an excellent USR essay reflecting on being a writer who just happens to be from the South. Despite others’ expectations that he write about red dirt, hunting, fishing, football, the land, and the people, Gary confessed that he doesn’t really feel motivated to write about
Flutes in History
Flutes are the oldest instrument in the world. Hollowed bird bones, with holes cut for tone changes, have been found in archaeological sites as old as 40,000 years. Early man may have heard wind whistling across the tops of reeds and designed an instrument that produced the same sound. Early flutes were played vertically, with
Ten Reasons to Pay It Forward
To pay it forward means that instead of paying someone back for a good deed, you do a good deed for someone else. Maybe you’ll surrender your first-place position in a long line at the 7-Eleven when someone behind you is in a hurry. On a rainy day, you might hand an umbrella to someone
Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason
Everything does not happen for a reason. The notion that it does is a self-centered human fantasy based on limited, exclusionary knowledge. It helps people deal with immense uncertainties beyond their powers of perception. They’re staggering through life blind to their actual nature. The concept of “a reason” only exists for humans. When you remove
Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred
The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I
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Novels and Collected Works
Raymond Carver, Remembered
For those who weren’t writing back in the nineteen eighties, it’s hard to imagine what a broad shadow Raymond Carver cast across the writing world. His work, and articles about him, seemed to appear everywhere, including The Paris Review, Atlantic, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In his final year, 1988, he was inducted into the
The Persistence of Doors
I was four years old, and we lived on the top floor of a fisherman’s house in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I could see the ocean from my window, and our landlord often brought us fresh seafood. My father, a USAF radar operator, worked lots of seven day weeks and double shifts because of the Cold
Joseph Campbell on Schopenhauer, Will, and Life’s Composition
In his splendid essay called “On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual,” Schopenhauer points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed
Ten Reasons to Enjoy Shakespeare’s Works
In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom argues that Shakespeare did more than just shape the structure and content of the English language—he created human nature as we understand it today. As James Shapiro explains, “Shakespeare remains so popular and his most memorable characters feel so real because through them Shakespeare invented something that hadn’t
Ten Reasons to Appreciate Science
In the mid-1700s, natural phenomena were so poorly understood in the American Colonies that lightning was considered by many to be an indicator of God’s wrath. Accordingly, if lightning struck a house and caused a fire, neighbors often let the home burn to the ground because they figured this was God’s intention. Then in 1753