What keeps me busy
- Power and persuasion. Who prevails, and why? How much of it is argument, and how much is a technique of influence?
- People and their tools. How far can people be improved, through knowledge, training, technology, and where does it stop being an improvement?
- Money, markets, freedom. Who decides over one’s own means, and what happens when you take that into your own hands?
- The great novels. I love the classics. “Anna Karenina”, for example: so much psychology, so many layers, that every reading turns up something new. I am interested in how such books are built and why they still hit home after more than a hundred years.
- Self-experiments. Languages, habits, ways of working: not read and passed on, but tested.
Who I like to learn from
When I read, I keep company with people who take literature seriously without letting it gather dust: Adam Walker with “Close Reading Poetry”, who takes close reading out of the lecture hall, and Le Hussard, who lets you rediscover world literature with verve and punchlines in the light of today’s questions.
How I write
I write about what I have read, tried out or thought through, not about what one is supposed to say right now. Some texts are worked-out essays, some are notes in the margin in the literal sense. If you disagree, feel free to tell me; if you agree, that too.