Culture & Religion — October 10, 2010

The Letters of Saul Bellow

“Saul Bellow’s letters are to be published later this month, five years after his death. Letters to Philip Roth and Martin Amis provide a taster of the much-anticipated collection.”

bigthinkeditor

“Bellow’s letters take the reader through a long and replete—’capacious’ is his wife’s word for it—life. The earliest surviving letter was written at the age of 17, when he was on holiday with one of his two brothers. In it, Bellow breaks off with a childhood girlfriend, Yetta Barshevsky. It is thrilling. Already, you can see a future novelist at work. ‘It is dark now and the lonely wind is making the trees softly whisper and rustle. Somewhere in the night a bird cries out to the wind. My brother in the next room snores softly, insistently. The country sleeps…Over me the light swings up and back, up and back. It throws shadows on the paper, on my face. I am thinking, thinking, Yetta, drifting with night, with infinity, and all my thoughts are of you.'”

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

▸

7 min

—

with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Politics & Current Affairs

The Future of Global Power

Global institutions require the leadership of great powers; it remains to be seen whether this century’s powers are up for the task, says Harvard professor Joseph Nye.