I remember the first time I heard Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues,” a song about winning and losing in life. I was 10 years old, attempting to explain the lyrics to my father. Sitting across from me in the kitchen of our old apartment, his acoustic guitar across his lap, my father respo

I never saw the root of the realIn arboreal flare,Nor witnessed this man walk on water,Nor that one float in air. I sat beneath the bodhi tree;I felt my body itch.Between the true cup and the falseI knew not which was which. My eyes have never blown like fusesSparked black upon a wall,No s

'F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction,' by John T. Irwin

Robert Bartlett’s book will also be welcome to those who have experienced something of the power of the cult of the saints in their own time and place.

The nature of reading is private, but part of the thrill of reading a magazine is the knowledge that others are reading the same material at roughly the same time.

'Hothouse,' by Boris Kachka