“Alcoholics Anonymous,” the famous “Big Book” of A.A., does not use the word “sponsor” in its 164 pages, but it certainly describes a society in which one member helps another learn … about the fellowship, about life without drinking one day at a time, about life. Period. “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. … Carry this message to other alcoholics! You can help when no one else can,” Bill Wilson writes at the start of Chapter 7, “Working with Others.”

The great insight is that when we help others, we help ourselves; when we see ourselves in others’ plights, we see ourselves and thus our own plights become ever more reasonable to negotiate. For many alcoholics, it is the first practical application of “walking the walk” and not just talking to make noise. I taught college for five…

Objects do not often speak for themselves. It takes the right artist or poet to find the voice the object demands.

I wish I still possessed a copy of my one published academic paper. I remember its subject but not its point. The late Thomas M. Greene was rumored to have liked it; he may have told someone who told another who eventually (a year later) mentioned to me that he considered my work “unique.” (In academia, “unique” is not always not a back-handed compliment, and if he had been my professor he might have asked me to make it a bit less unique.) Professor Greene was an invited guest to a symposium my graduate studies department was holding; I was one of about ten speakers. My work, unique or not, was not invited to Yale, which Professor Greene called home. I was working on George Herbert and Arcimboldo, who…