Monday, November 10, 2014

Changing your mind

This is fun: I got asked by the Chronicle of Higher Education to contribute my thoughts on what nonfiction book of the last thirty years genuinely changed my mind about something important. It is curiously hard to think of instances of this (I suppose the account of decision-making in the Kahnemann Thinking, Fast and Slow has changed my idea of how I should conduct a search?). I enjoyed writing this one.

Saw The Death of Klinghoffer on Saturday at the Met. It is amazing: somber, beautiful, MAJOR. Very glad I didn't miss it. Still chewing over thoughts in the wake. I was thinking and talking about documentary art last week already with Clotel, and having been to Israel this year probably intensified my experience too: the score is just absolutely staggering, though.

Back to teaching today. Really this is good: my fall break was rather wasted, I did valuable and important things I suppose (and continued to recover from lingering cold) but it is hard not to feel that I should have gotten a lot more work and exercise in somehow! Next four weeks will be extremely demanding and I am of course, impractically, consumed with ideas of all the books I want to be writing - more thoughts on that at some more leisurely moment....

No comments:

Post a Comment