The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads from 2015

Robert Walser, the Art of Walking, and Our Daily Dance of Posturing and Sincerity
Robert Walser, the Art of Walking, and Our Daily Dance of Posturing and Sincerity

“It is not with pleasures and with joys that a man grows proud. Proud and gay in the roots of his soul he becomes only through trial bravely undergone.”

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Thoreau on Hard Work, the Myth of Productivity, and the True Measure of Meaningful Labor
Thoreau on Hard Work, the Myth of Productivity, and the True Measure of Meaningful Labor

“Those who work much do not work hard.”

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The Agony of the Artist (with a capital A): E.E. Cummings on What It Really Means to Be an Artist and His Little-Known Line Drawings
The Agony of the Artist (with a capital A): E.E. Cummings on What It Really Means to Be an Artist and His Little-Known Line Drawings

“The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.”

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Rethinking Our Atlas of Possibility: An Alphabet Book of Imaginative, Uncommon, and Stereotype-Defying Occupations
Rethinking Our Atlas of Possibility: An Alphabet Book of Imaginative, Uncommon, and Stereotype-Defying Occupations

An antidote to centuries of limiting and unimaginative ideas about what boys and girls can grow up to be.

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Kafka’s Beautiful and Heartbreaking Love Letters
Kafka’s Beautiful and Heartbreaking Love Letters

“I belong to you… But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life.”

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The Nature and Nurture of Genius: The Sweet Illustrated Story of How Henri Matisse’s Childhood Shaped His Creative Legacy
The Nature and Nurture of Genius: The Sweet Illustrated Story of How Henri Matisse’s Childhood Shaped His Creative Legacy

A heartening testament to the nourishing power of parental love in the cultivation of greatness.

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Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.”

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Mary Oliver on the Measure of a Life Well Lived and How to Maximize Our Aliveness
Mary Oliver on the Measure of a Life Well Lived and How to Maximize Our Aliveness

“Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going?”

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Virginia Woolf on the Paradox of the Soul and the Consolations of Growing Older
Virginia Woolf on the Paradox of the Soul and the Consolations of Growing Older

“One can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes.”

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The People’s Platform: An Essential Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Cultural Commons in the Age of Commerce
The People’s Platform: An Essential Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Cultural Commons in the Age of Commerce

“We are embedded beings who create work in a social context, toiling shared soil in the hopes that our labor bears fruit. It is up to all of us whether this soil is enriched or depleted, whether it nurtures diverse and vital produce or allows predictable crops to take root and run rampant.”

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