Those who get a thrill from pondering the Mayan prediction that the world will end in 2012 don’t know what the Mayans thought, writes David Hart in the “On the Square” article for today. After explaining why — which is quite interesting in itself — he examines what this taste for apocalypse says about us, about how we see the world and what we want from it, in The Appeal of a World Scattered and Scorched .
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…