Figure of Speech

The Practical Polymath #76

Hi Friends,

Greetings from Brooklyn!

Welcome to this latest edition of the Practical Polymath, a newsletter about finding wonder in the mundane.

Until next time, 

Florian 

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Weekly Wisdom

📚  Book of the Week: Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing” is the absolute best book on the craft of writing I have read. And I’m not even a Stephen King fan. Or at least I wasn’t until I got sucked into this masterclass on how to write and what it takes to do it as a lifestyle. To everyone I forced into buying the book this week, I’m not sorry.  

🛑 No Thanks: It’s not easy to turn down an invitation. We simply can’t stand the idea of coming across as rude or worse, anti-social. Perhaps that’s why it is so satisfying to read these hilariously candid declines by famous figures from Harold Pinter to Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula Le Guin.

🔍 Figure of Speech: When the podcast Philosophize This! drops a new episode, I get excited like a kid who’s just been told he’s going on a trip to the candy shop. The latest episode talks about how metaphors are far from innocuous. They determine how we see the world and experience it. For example, we talk about a person’s “battle with cancer” which Susan Sontag called out for implicitly burdening the patient with the responsibility of defeating the disease. To dig deeper into the subject of metaphors as the building blocks of our reality, I recommend dipping into Metaphors we Live By. 

📷 New Yorkers: From the 70s to the 90s, Richard Sandler got up close with New Yorkers riding subways, pushing strollers, begging for a dime, rushing to work and walking their dog. I’m sharing some of my favorite ones here although the entire set from the Eye of the City is a real treat.   

Richard Sandler, CC train, NYC, 1985

Richard Sandler, Mad Ave., NYC, 1982

Richard Sandler, Unnamed

Lateral Thought 

Writing is refined thinking.

Stephen King