The central relationship in Gabrielle Zevin’s best-selling novel “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is the lifelong creative partnership between Sam and Sadie, childhood friends who go on to start a video game company. The novel depicts the exhilarating highs and enraging lows of collaboration, including fights over recognition — that is, how Sam and Sadie see each other’s contributions to their work compared with how the world sees them.
One of the games they develop together, “Solution,” is now caught up in a real-life debate about artistry and credit.
Among psychologists, such intuitive psychology — the ability to attribute to other people mental states different from our own — is called theory of mind, and its absence or impairment has been linked to autism, schizophrenia and other developmental disorders. Theory of mind helps us communicate with and understand one another; it allows us to enjoy literature and movies, play games and make sense of our social surroundings. In many ways, the capacity is an essential part of being human.
What if a machine could read minds, too?
That’s just what the world’s leading pastry chefs are doing with croissant dough: coiling it into pinwheels and squiggles, tying it in knots and stacking it into cubes. They are turning it into breakfast cereal, tie-dyeing it and, in Mr. Ly’s case, wrapping it around baguettes.
We all know that a holiday means liberation from your habits as much as from your home; even in a place not far from where you live, you have the chance to be someone different from the self you know too well. And to see the world you thought you knew afresh. No tickets to buy, no itineraries to fret over. No visas, no injections, no fancy clothes, no people to impress. I’d been living near Osaka for 34 years, but now, for the first time ever, I was getting to see a small part of it from within.
When I left Singapore to come to the US for college, much of my single suitcase was dedicated to food (“supplies” as I thought of it): pineapple tarts, ba kwa, sauce packets to make curry and chicken rice, and of course, a tin of Milo. I found out when I got here that Milo could be found in the occasional Asian supermarket, but it tasted different. Sweeter somehow, or less malty, or something. I resolved to always bring it from home.
This is an epic novel, but not for its 464-page length, nor for the impressive amount of history it covers. It is an epic for the reasons life itself is epic. “The Great Reclamation” asks the reader to confront the big things, like love and identity and loss, but it allows us to revel in the little things, too, from the buttery taste of steamed fish to the smooth surface of a rubber seed.
When you're confronted with the whole world at once — when you can fathom even the things you cannot see and are not prepared for — it becomes impossible to hide from the truth. Clint Smith's new poems in Above Ground wash over like waves asking us to discern all the times we've trusted the world, even when it has not offered us a steady current.
In Shaughnessy’s hands, this refusal to relinquish the people she loves can’t be brushed off as mere denial. It suggests something greater, more devoted and complicated, which I am still trying to learn from her work, and for which I am grateful.