Maybe I’m sick, but I want to see that again.—Overheard by film critic Pauline Kael after a screening of Blue Velvet David Lynch died five days shy of his seventy-ninth birthday, presumably from complications related to emphysema—he was an inveterate, even joyful, smoker. Inveterate might be the best word I
The Healthy Mind and the Sick Soul Despite having been excommunicated from the Jewish community as a young man and vilified as an atheist and corruptor of morality in his later years, Baruch Spinoza was, it seems, a happy man. Stephen Nadler writes that, though he was often more occupied
Act I: The Lonely Question For Hans Urs von Balthasar, there is no question as important or as lonely as, “Who am I?” It is important because—and this will seem strange at first—it is impossible to answer. Impossible, at least, using all the things and meanings and people around us.