My rediscovery of James coincided with falling in love: suddenly, unexpectedly, and if I may be frank, involuntarily. It was as if I were Henry St George and Paul Overt in one. At the heart of the conflict, just as in The Lesson of the Master, was a book. I was under contract and under deadline. I pictured myself as Overt in St George’s comfortable room, and I heard the elder author’s encouragement of the young writer, “Try to do some really good work,” as well as, “You’re very strong—you’re wonderfully strong.” Strong enough to give up my version of Marian Fancourt, as St George hoped Overt would do? I considered the pair of mild blue eyes that had startled me into love in the first place, and wondered if I would, by St George’s measure, pass the test.
While there are models that describe how this great transition might have happened, giant gaps in our picture remain. When did the first stars form and when did light, escaping their host galaxies, kick off reionization? What kinds of galaxies were most responsible and what was the role of black holes? How did reionization proceed across time and space? And what clues might it hold to other cosmic mysteries, like the nature of dark matter?
“We don’t understand how the universe came to be what it is today,” Muñoz says.
Some answers are now within reach, thanks to new tools that allow scientists to look back deep into the universe’s first billion years. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in 2021, is peering at the galaxies that existed only hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang and is already turning up surprises. At the same time, next-generation radio telescopes are focusing not on the galaxies but on the neutral hydrogen that once pervaded all of space. That hydrogen provides clues to how the epoch of reionization unfolded, and other characteristics of the cosmos.
I still love going out to eat, but I find there’s a level of disengagement that can come when dining out becomes the default mode of socializing. We’re just throwing down credit cards, waiting to be served. Potlucks, by comparison, require thought and active involvement. You don’t have to do the most or spend the most, but you do have to make some effort. After all, the big meat stew might earn all the oohs and ahhs, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as satisfying without someone else’s contribution of rice — simple, yet still essential.
I Made It Out of Clay looks at grief and loneliness through a romantic holiday lens. Like the golem within its pages, it is a story designed to lessen some of the harshness of life. A comforting read for literal and figurative winters, I Made It Out of Clay will inject some coziness into your holiday season while gently nudging you toward emotions that may need your attention.
Shaggy figures with snarling masks and metre-long horns, scenes of wild drunkenness, random assaults on strangers, witches winding your intestines out on a stick, a giant “Yule Cat” who will eat you if you’ve failed to put on new clothes for the day – no, it’s not your annual family get-together, at least I hope not. It’s a compendium of European seasonal lore from the dark side, as explored in this excellent short book by historian and folklorist Sarah Clegg. She combines a trove of good stories with a serious critique of earlier mythographers’ ideas about them, and also takes us on adventures ranging from pre-dawn graveyard walks to the terrors of Salzburg’s pre-Christmas “Krampus night”, named for the monstrous masked figures who prowl its streets on 5 December.