Zohar Atkins: Mice, Miracle, Larry David, Poets, Separation, Tyrant as Editor
Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.
Zohar Atkins (@ZoharAtkins) is the founder of Lightning, an ed tech company focused on inspiring learning as a way of life. Read his manifesto here. He is also a rabbi who writes about philosophy, religion, and culture on his Substack What Is Called Thinking? and pens a weekly Torah commentary at Etz Hasadeh. Atkins is a Rhodes Scholar, a Hiett Prize winner, and an Emergent Ventures Fellow.
Please enjoy these works and words that have mattered to Zohar!
Zohar’s Picks
The Mice
Lydia Davis | 2010
I’m obsessed with Lydia Davis’s work, especially her very short stories. I regard her as a formal genius. She compresses so much humor, wit, and psychological insight into every word. Her stories capture the intimate experience of thinking and processing the world in a way that is almost claustrophobic. Like David Foster Wallace, her subjects, including her semi-autobiographical “I”, are often mentally imbalanced and deeply warped, yet there is a humanity and charm conveyed by seeing the world through their eyes. Start with her Collected Stories. I found my way to Davis, strangely, via the experimental poet Rae Armantrout, whose work I also esteem. Davis feels adjacent to what is called “language poetry”, or poetry that is about language itself, yet her work provides more narrative movement and manages to be both avant-garde and accessible, a rare feat not achieved by her peers.
The Secret Miracle
Jorge Luis Borges | 1943
I adore Borges, who manages to express complex philosophical ideas via deeply erudite and intertextually rich stories. This story is about a young writer who composes his masterpiece in his head right before getting shot by a firing squad. The story itself defies logic by conveying to us an event that is itself impossible to witness. Just as miracles require faith, and cannot be proven, so too, we are asked to believe in this secret miracle, the miracle of a person finding a sense of completion even under dire conditions.
Larry David on Anonymous Giving
Larry David | 2013
This clip will make you laugh the next time you see a donor plaque labeled “anonymous.”
Harold Bloom Reads Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens | 2010
Wallace Stevens is a philosopher’s poet and a poet’s philosopher. While philosophers offer theories of the world, Stevens shows his theories. As I read him, he’s an idealist who believes reality is created by the mind. He’s not an absolute idealist who thinks there’s no real there outside of us, but he is a kind of subjectivist who thinks consciousness is creative. All “I”s are poets, and all poets impose their song on the world. Bloom’s reading is impassioned. Whether you agree with his theories or not, his net effect was to mainstream his love and appreciation for poetry, including difficult poets like Stevens, and for that I’m grateful.
The Storyteller
Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin was a giant who died tragically before his time. His sentences are spells. His Marxism is bonkers and outdated, but his meditations on literature, art, and history, often drawing on Jewish mysticism and esotericism, are stunningly creative. The Storyteller defends the lost tradition of storytelling in an age of information, a work of cultural criticism that still resonates. Benjamin argues that we’ve lost the ability to experience the world. Of course, people share stories all the time; some now make livings live-streaming their lives. But Benjamin is talking about something else, the idea of oral tradition, of taking folklore and subtly adapting it to the world you find yourself in. Perhaps these stories have lost their power because the world is accelerating. Or perhaps the business model of the storyteller simply doesn’t work in the age of new media. In either case, this piece will have you feeling nostalgic for something you can’t quite touch.
A Separation
Asghar Farhadi | 2011
This is a heavy film, but also one that captures the fundamental uncertainty and unreliability of perspective. I’m not a relativist, but this film portrays the experience of multiple, conflicting truths, each having validity.
The Tyrant as Editor
Holly Case | 2013
Did you know Stalin was an editor? This piece shows that power rests less with the author than the editor, in large part precisely because the editor is hidden from view. Worth considering again in the age of AI, where the people determining model output are hidden from view yet decisive for what we end up doing and thinking.
Spotlight on Zohar’s Work
What Is Called Thinking? (Philosophy Blog)
Etz Hasadeh (Torah Blog)
Second Voice (AI and Education Blog)
Alexandria (AI Guide to Great Books)
Yochai (AI Guide to Torah; Sign up for Beta)
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