How to Cite These Archived Letters
Dear Colleague Archive 1986
| Date of Letter | Topic Summary | ID |
|---|---|---|
| 1986-January-01 | "Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), one of the greatest poets of modern times, was also a geographer. Whereas everyone who has even a slight familiarity with French letters knows about Les Illuminations, few geographers are aware that this poet whose works are said to have altered the course of modern literature also contributed papers to a geographical journal." |
7 |
| 1986-January-20 | "I have wondered from time to time whether my kind of intelligence is primitive or modern. Reluctantly I conclude that it is primitive. A characteristic of the primitive mind is its tendency to assign intelligence to whatever it sees, and especially if what it sees displays evident order." | 8 |
| 1986-February-01 | On pride, cruelty and self. " 'We' implies 'they.' A result of using this pair of pronouns incessantly is group solidarity--a warm communal feeling. By contrast, 'I' implies other 'I's--all the other 'I's in the world, all the other human beings who can also say 'I'. " | 9 |
| 1986-February-15 | On the use of exclamation points; also "I like comfort but am repelled by luxury. Lionel Trilling in Beyond Culture reminds us that the old meaning of luxury is erotic and nothing but erotic." | 10 |
| 1986-March-01 | On sympathy, schadenfreude, mitfreude, mitleid. " 'Sympathetic joy' is common enough when there is no competition: thus adults can often take honest delight in the athletic prowess of a child. Otherwise, it is the most severe test of friendship." | 11 |
| 1986-March-15 | "...how sad it is that philosophy is, by now, so firmly divorced from psychology...Moral philosophers seem to think that we are all disembodied liberals concerned almost solely with large abstract questions of social justice and with resolving intricate moral dilemmas that sound much like intellectual puzzles." | 12 |
| 1986-April-01 | "What does it mean to be 'overwhelmed by life'? It sounds like something that one would not want. But then, does one prefer to be 'underwhelmed'? Clearly not. So the trouble lies not with the word overwhelmed--for one does not fear being overwhelmed by praise or love--but with the word life, which is sometimes conceived as a succession of frustrating demands." | 13 |
| 1986-April-15 | "...if love is so common it ought to show on people's faces. Fieldwork is in order. I walked up and down State Street to see whether this is in fact the case..." | 14 |
| 1986-May-01 | "...we are most reluctant to acknowledge decay. We used to see the hills as 'built' and eternal when they are not, and we now tend to see the city as a permanent accomplishment--something that can grow as new features are added but will not really fall apart." | 15 |
| 1986-May-15 | On daydreams. "I submit that, in general, our fantasy life is rather poor. Our daydreams are usually so colorless that we have to be supplied better ones by the advertisers of Madison Avenue." | 16 |
| 1986-August-15 | "I am never quite sure whether I feel pleased or annoyed when my own behavior or the personal relationships in my life can be understood or explained in accordance with some social-scientific schema." | 17 |
| 1986-September-01 | On conversation and biochemists. "All that I have written are meant to serve as opening conversational gambits. I had hoped that people reading them will say, 'Yes, I see what you mean, but on the other hand...' ." | 18 |
| 1986-September-15 | "I've found a way to say something good about shoddy work. Rather than say that a paper is incoherent, say that it is penetrated by reality." | 19 |
| 1986-September-19 | Special letter on Columbia Univeristy geography. "Two great opportunities came to geography in the last three decades, but they have both turned into threats to our institutional survival." | 20 |
| 1986-October-05 | "What [George Orwell] likes about late Victorian England, for all its social and environmental horrors, is the retention of a certain amount of decency and comeliness, a lingering belief in the nonarbitrary nature of good and evil, and an ability to say 'no' to certain deeds..." | 21 |
| 1986-October-15 | On the evocative nature of place-names. "I think you will need to have had direct experience of Trenton and Camden to have these place names mean something for you. This is not the case in China." | 22 |
| 1986-November-01 | For gradute students. "Darwin was an unprecocious giant. He, rather than Newton, is the model for the aspiring geographer." | 23 |
| 1986-November-15 | "Philosophers in philosophy departments still go about their humble task of trying to clarify the works of the masters, but professors in English departments...wish to emulate or replicate the density and subtlety of the masters and thus lay claim to being masters themselves." | 24 |
| 1986-December-01 | " 'All families look great through windows.' " | 25 |
| 1986-December-15 | On happy writers, Tolstoy, Woolf. "...'Why, given my vile life, do I have so much happiness?' " | 26 |
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