What else I've been reading in July 2026
America as seen by Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and William T. Vollman, among other things
This is one in a series of monthly posts that round up the (mostly non-city-related) books and essays that also figure into my reading life.
Books
Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation: A register of Dickens' disappointment at his first visit to the U.S., this travelogue records many impressions of transit, by carriage, rail, riverboat, etc. He finally comes to the Tocquevillian point that Americans could do well to love the Real less and the Ideal more.
Essays
“The world is violent and futile; progress, when it comes, comes neither from revolution nor from ordinary politics but from the boards eroding themselves, the slow, inevitable transformation of all things in the face of technology and contingency.”
“Here in Fort America, the walls creak, then something smashes onto the roof. Gazing up at the watchtowers, I wonder how many of them have been abandoned by their sentries.”
“Nei capitoli dedicati a Trieste la città è raccontata come un luogo di confine, incrocio di culture, ma è vista soprattutto attraverso il filtro della poesia.”
“It was not uncommon, in the various places at which we stayed, for persons of unsettled minds persistently to seek an interview with the novelist.”
“The mind is trained to look for variation; noticing it is essential to survival. We have built a world that increasingly delivers us this variation—the new, the unusual, the remarkable. But this cycle hides shapes and structures that stay unspoken.”
“No sería equivocado aseverar que Cortázar amaba y odiaba a su país, lo mismo que éste lo amaba y odiaba a él.”
“Moby Dick is long, dense, philosophical, and punctuated with eccentric soliloquies, many moving and beautiful, and some that sound like they come from that guy sitting in corner of a McDonald’s, wearing remains of a once fine outfit.”
“Americans are now three generations into a set of policies that, on the one hand, provide open-ended subsidies for sprawl and, on the other, do little to ameliorate the problems of the urban core.”
“이 동네에 전차의 굉음이 진동하는 천지개벽이 일어난 것이다. 전차가 들어서니 역사(驛舍)가 생기고 역사가 들어서니 역세권이 되었다. 역세권하면 무엇이 떠오르는가? 아파트다. 그래서 우리나라 최초의 아파트, 풍전아파트가 들어섰다.”
“In 1965, the arts were still largely understood in formalist, apolitical terms. 'Artistic excellence' made sense as a standard independent of content. By 1975, that consensus was gone.”
“Will we look back and find it grotesque that we took the most credentialed minds of a generation and had them spend their twenties reformatting pitch decks at two in the morning?”
“Es más probable que posible que sus posiciones culturales con respecto al fútbol se arrimen a la famosa visión de Alexis de Tocqueville, que asociaba a los pueblos y a la democracia con una 'tiranía de las mayorías'.”
“If Ravelstein is too quick to judge at times, he complements Chick, who evades the responsibility of judging.”
“Everyone seems to blame the internet for our ever-increasing polarization. It would be funny if the true culprit were education and economic growth.”
“Una buona biblioteca, nel senso di una cattiva biblioteca (e cioè di un buon esempio del modello negativo che cerco di realizzare), dev’essere anzitutto un immenso cauchemar, deve essere totalmente incubatica.”
“Successive editions of the Biographical Dictionary (there have now been six) testify to Thomson’s growing disillusionment: the grand passions of an auteurist sensibility ground down by the tectonic shifts in modern media’s development.”
“Like Berlin, whose Roaring 20’s were remarkably similar to Shanghai’s (cabarets, movies, revolution), Shanghai is in the process of reinventing itself, and its prewar past, with all its peculiar contrasts, is serving as the only model at hand.”
“La Historia debía servir para entender el pasado y comprender el futuro, para construir ciudadanía y, para ser argentinos tolerantes, honrados y más comprensivos decía un reflexivo Luna.”
“There is no recapturing the mythological—and curiously innocent—gleam of earlier World Cup eras. Part of the allure of Pelé, say, was that, unless you lived in São Paulo, and saw him work regular wonders for his club, Santos, you barely glimpsed the guy.”
“Before it was permanently disassembled, Nakagin had fallen into a kind of cyberpunk decay that appealed to a milieu of DJs, designers, urban-weekender couples, tea obsessives, and dedicated hobbyists with disposable but far from inexhaustible—incomes.”
“È proprio attraverso il momento della traduzione che Pavese ebbe modo di esperire l’America in una sorta di personale grand sneak nel mistero americano che gli è necessario per riappropriarsi dei propri luoghi nativi.”
“It would have been easy for a Marxist, humanist and occasional ruralist like Berger simply to condemn Le Corbusier, especially in the mid-60s; he does not.”
“Every so-called fallacy closely resembles forms of reasoning that are perfectly legitimate, depending on the context. In formal terms, good and bad arguments are often indistinguishable.”