Mr Bennett's Ideas

Mr Bennett And Mrs Brown

Virginia Woolf | Berfrois | 22nd February 2022

Woolf's rebuttal to fellow novelist Arnold Bennett, who had published a review of Jacob's Room under the title "Is the Novel Decaying" and suggested that her characters did not "vitally survive in the mind". Her essay has since been read as a mission statement for modernism, in particular her injunction that readers should "tolerate the spasmodic, the obscure, the fragmentary, the failure" (7,838 words)

Where Ideas Go To Die

Matthew Guay | Reproof | 15th February 2022

Taking notes should be about forgetting, not remembering. Whether it is in notebooks or via a constellation of apps, we hoard information that we aren't ready to let go of yet. But recording things should, in fact, be about being free of them. "We’ve stalked the prey, secured it for later nourishment. We can safely forget. We’ve insured against faulty memories. Now on to the next quest" (1,404 words)

BROWSER CLASSIFIEDS:

Do you know your whodunnits from your howdunnits? Your locked rooms from your impossible crimes? Go deep on all aspects of the classic murder mystery with Shedunnit, the podcast from Browser editor Caroline Crampton. Listen to Shedunnit now in your podcast app of choice.

You'll reach 60k+ smart, curious readers with your advert in The Browser.

Afterthought:
"You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side"
— William Ewart Gladstone

You cannot fight against your future as a Browser subsriber: