Reviews and Comments

timthinks

timthinks@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 months, 3 weeks ago

Dad of 2, non-profit exec, outdoors, reading, games, e-bikes, home-lab novice, whatever else!

This link opens in a pop-up window

Alan Jacobs: Breaking Bread with the Dead (2020, Penguin Publishing Group) 4 stars

W. H. Auden once wrote that “art is our chief means of breaking bread with …

This isn’t that famous Mary Oliver formulation that starts with the autonomous and authoritative self — what will you do with your wild and precious life? In a gift economy, the self is first on the receiving end of abundance — gifts hidden, apparent, emerging, hard-sought. It takes practice and imagination and breaking bread with the dead to help young people see life as a gift. And then it takes more of the same, and more besides, to help them ask with that same spirit of abundance: How can I give my life away? From sarahendren.substack.com/p/unmuddling-the-university