Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's also in the language we use and everywhere in the world around us. In this elegant, witty, and ultimately profound meditation on what is beautiful, Crispin Sartwell begins with six words from six different cultures - ancient Greek's "to kalon," the Japanese idea of "wabi-sabi," Hebrew's "yapha," the Navajo concept "hozho," Sanskrit "sundara," and our own English-language "beauty." Each word becomes a door onto another way of thinking about, and looking at, what is beautiful in the world, and in our lives. The earthy and the exalted, the imperfect and the ideal: things, spaces, high art, sounds, aromas, nothingness. Sartwell writes about handfuls of beautiful things - among them, a Japanese teapot and Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel, the pleasure in a well-used hammer and in pop music and in Vermeer's "Girl in a Red Hat." In Sartwell's hands these six names of beauty -and there could be thousands more-are revealed as simple and profound ideas about our world and our selves.
Author
Crispin Sartwell was born 6.20.58 in DC. His Dad (and his and his) were DC newspapermen. His Mom and Step-pa were high school teachers and later organic farmers. He got kicked out of the public school system in tenth grade for fomenting revolution, and attended the New Education Project, aka Bonzo Ragamuffin Prep, then U Maryland, Johns Hopkins, UVA. He worked as a copy boy in 1980-81 at the Washington Star, where he started writing about pop music. He was a freelance rock critic through the eighties for, among others the Balt City Paper, Record Mag, High Fidelity, and Melody Maker. He lives in Glen Rock, PA with his wife, the writer Marion Winik, and their five children. He's Visiting Associate Prof of Political Science at Dickinson College. He writes a weekly op-ed column, distributed by Creators Syndicate. He has also appeared in Harper's, the Washington Post, and on Weekend All Things Considered. He is the author and editor of a number of books, and he's taught philosophy and communications at Vanderbilt, the Unversity of Alabama, and Penn State Harrisburg.
