Sentences — May 16, 2008, 5:22 pm
SIGN IN to access Harper’s Magazine
ALERT: Usernames and passwords from the old Harpers.org will no longer work. To create a new password and add or verify your email address, please sign in to customer care and select Email/Password Information. (To learn about the change, please read our FAQ.)
Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!
Create a login here. Forgot password? Forgot email? More help here.
The week began with the forgotten Josiah Mitchell Morse, (who as of May 14 has been granted his Wikipedia page) and ends with the very few sentences from his typewriter that are remembered online. The first is a bonbon, a letter Morse wrote to the New York Times, in 1989:
To the Editor:
Here is a true story about Samuel Beckett that is not in any of the many books about him.
In the summer of 1971 a student of mine at Temple University went to Europe without taking along enough money. When he was down to his last few centimes, walking along a Paris street, wondering what to do, he saw Samuel Beckett coming toward him…(continued)
And the second (and, sadly, last) came to my attention via the gracious David Lull. It is a brief sermonlet that begins:
Ayenbite of inwit [Remorse of Conscience], a popular fourteenth-century handbook of virtues and vices, says we don’t sin unless we first consent to sin. It refers specifically to sexual sin, and to conscious decision. But the sins of the mind are more subtle, and the decision is not necessarily conscious. Our inner labyrinths are in so devious that often when we sin intellectually we think we are making a decision for virtue…
More from Wyatt Mason:
Sentences — May 1, 2009, 2:41 pm
Sentences — April 29, 2009, 4:12 pm
Ratio of the number of cicada eggs per square mile of southern New Jersey to the number of stars in the Milky Way:
Jeffrey Lockwood, University of Wyoming (Laramie)/American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.C.)
A Singaporean company unveiled Kissenger, a pair of plastic lips mounted on a large plastic egg, which transmits real-time interactive kisses to a distant lover. “I am not interested in the sexual uses for it,” said the device’s inventor. “We’ve taken several steps to minimize the creepiness.”
The practice of sexualized eyeball licking was causing conjunctivitis in Japanese sixth graders.
