At The New York Times, Parul Sehgal examines time through the writing being produced during the pandemic, as well as the books she reads (and re-reads). “To describe the passage of time has always been one of the favorite challenges of the writer or philosopher,” Sehgal writes. “‘Where is it, this present?’ William James wondered. ‘It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.’ In Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, the heroine declares: ‘We can never know Time. Our senses are simply not meant to perceive it.’ The mysteries of time are bound up in the great unknowns of the body and universe, from consciousness to black holes.”
Reflecting on Time During Quaratine Reading
