Pain can lead to growth: Geoff Dyer (and the research)

Geoff Dyer writes so well it seems somehow demeaning to call him a critic, but that's how the world slots him, pretty much, and in books like "Out of Sheer Rage" — his admiring account of D.H. Lawrence's battles — he helps redefine the form.  At only 56, last week Dyer suffered a stroke, while livingContinue reading “Pain can lead to growth: Geoff Dyer (and the research)”

Humiliation planned for losing candidate: Romney set

The most astonishing book of the year to date around here is critic Wayne Koestenbaum's Humiliation, from 2011, a pained confessional essay about being brought low, about being crushed, about what the pain of embarrassment, shame, and mortification brings to a sufferer.     Tomorrow the media pillory that Koestenbaum describes so well will begin (it's alreadyContinue reading “Humiliation planned for losing candidate: Romney set”