The Longing

The New Yorker staff writer and Filterworld author Kyle Chayka examines the deep roots-and untapped possibilities-of our newfound, all-consuming drive to reduce. “Less is more”: Everywhere we hear the mantra. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems. We commit to cleanse diets and strive for inbox zero. Amid the frantic pace and distraction of everyday life, we covet silence-and airy, Instagrammable spaces in which to enjoy it. The popular term for this brand of upscale austerity, “minimalism,” has mostly come to stand for things to buy and consume. But minimalism has richer, deeper, and altogether more valuable gifts to offer. In The Longing for Less, one of our sharpest cultural critics delves beneath the glossy surface of minimalist trends, seeking better ways to claim the time and space we crave. Kyle Chayka's search leads him to the philosophical and spiritual origins of minimalism, and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin and Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and designers; visionaries and misfits. As Chayka looks anew at their extraordinary lives and explores the places where they worked-from Manhattan lofts to the Texas high desert and the back alleys of Kyoto-he reminds us that what we most require is presence, not absence. The result is an elegant synthesis of our minimalist desires and our profound emotional needs. With a new afterword by the author.

I've never been afraid of the dark...but that doesn't mean I wanted to live in it. And maybe everyone wants what they can't have, but I should've thought it over before I accepted the key and unlocked the door to their forbidden world. Number One is mostly silent. He watches me with them very carefully. His gaze never wanders. His interest never wanes. Number Two is mostly gentle. But it's the other side of him I like best. The wild side. Number Three is mostly reserved. He refuses to cross the line. Even when I beg. It was carnal, it was sensual, and it was erotic. That's it. That's all it was supposed to be. A trip into the dark. A peek into the forbidden. I just didn't expect to like them.

Leonard Cohen is one of the great writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Book of Longing is Cohen’s eagerly awaited new collection of poems, following his highly acclaimed 1984 title, Book of Mercy, and his hugely successful 1993 publication, Stranger Music, a Globe and Mail national bestseller. Book of Longing contains erotic, playful, and provocative line drawings and artwork on every page, by the author, which interact in exciting and unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is timeless, meditative, and at times darkly humorous. The book brings together all the elements that have brought Leonard Cohen’s artistry with language worldwide recognition.

Beneath the noise and errands of everyday life, there is a longing, a yearning. What precisely we long for is not always clear; indeed, perhaps it is many things. Or perhaps it is finally one thing, the One that is behind and beneath all things. Paul Hooker probes this longing in the poem cycle of this book, exploring poetically the yearning that underlies life, love, work, worship, and faith itself. In the collections “Traditions” and “Transitions,” he explores that longing in both biblical and experiential contexts. And in the concluding essay, “Sightings of the Holy,” he meditates on four poems and the glimpses they provide of the Holy, a reality accessible only out of the corners of one’s eyes.

Do your desires have you going around in circles? You may be looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places. You vowed you’d never repeat the same mistakes—yet you find yourself right where you started. What is it that keeps drawing you back into the same old traps? The fact is, your longings are built from the blueprint of your needs: for protection, for love, for God. And those needs aren’t going anywhere. Sheila speaks candidly about the trials in her life, including the heartache of her first marriage, and intertwines her story with the biblical saga of King David. As both Sheila’s and David’s stories make clear, some cravings are misguided, but they all stem from the same hunger—and they will haunt you until that hunger gets satisfied properly. If you keep reaching out to the wrong people at the wrong times in your own life, The Longing in Me will help you understand that your cravings are not the problem. It’s where they lead you that makes all the difference.

At present the battle over who defines our future is being waged most publicly by secular and religious fundamentalists. Hope and the Longing for Utopia offers an alternative position, disclosing a conceptual path toward potential worlds that resist a limited view of human potential and the gift of religion. In addition to outlining the value of embracing unknown potentialities, these twelve interdisciplinary essays explore why it has become crucial that we commit to hoping for values that resist traditional ideological commitments. Contextualized by contemporary writing on utopia, and drawing from a wealth of times and cultures ranging from Calvin's Geneva to early twentieth-century Japanese children's stories to Hollywood cinema, these essays cumulatively disclose the fundamental importance of resisting tantalizing certainties while considering the importance of the unknown and unknowable. Beginning with a set of four essays outlining the importance of hope and utopia as diagnostic concepts, and following with four concrete examples, the collection ends with a set of essays that provide theological speculations on the need to embrace finitude and limitations in a world increasingly enframed by secularizing impulses. Overall, this book discloses how hope and utopia illuminate ways to think past simplified wishes for the future.

In the early 1900 s thousands of immigrants crossed under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty to find freedom and opportunity in America. In "The Longing," history and culture provide the backdrop as the Taten family makes the difficult decision to immigrate to the United States from Holland. Like immigrants the world over, the Tatens discover that the longing for the comfort, traditions, and familiarity of one s homeland never ends. It s 1904, and Dora Taten wants to leave an untenable situation in the Netherlands to forge a new life in the United States. Not everyone in her newly blended and extended family not even her husband, Paul is convinced that this is a good idea. But enough members of this tightly knit Dutch family decide to take the risk and journey to America. They prepare as much as they can, but many surprises and challenges, good and bad, await them. Part family saga, part-coming-of-age story this richly textured novel is drawn from author Cornelia Warmenhoven s life experience and is colored with language, details, and illustrations that give a snapshot of life in another country and in another time. Step back in time and enjoy a simply good story, well told. It will delight and warm the heart. "