Jessa Crispin | The Smart Set

Earthly Intervention

Jessa Crispin — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 12:52:48 +0000

On the surface, it looks a lot like your typical Sunday School. There are children gathered at the feet of the woman teaching the class. They are singing Christmas carols, listening to stories about how we as people came to be on this earth, making arts and crafts. It could be taking place in any […]

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The Feminine Mystic

Jessa Crispin — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 13:00:33 +0000

Although it’s the men of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn we associate with the magical order, specifically the great poet and mystic W.B. Yeats and the sociopath and con man Aleister Crowley, women were fundamental to its running from the very beginning. Unlike the Christian churches they mostly came from, either Catholic or […]

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False Feminism

Jessa Crispin — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 12:00:32 +0000

Writing this in late October, it seems clear to me that no matter what happens on Election Day there will be no feeling of victory. I will drink to forget, not to celebrate, whether the next president is declared to be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. If Donald Trump becomes president, this will be an […]

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The Shlomo Sand (Inter)view

Jessa Crispin — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 12:00:50 +0000

In his book Varieties of Religious Experience, William James wrote about the power the irrational holds over the rational: If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared […]

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No Giggling Ghost

Jessa Crispin — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 11:30:36 +0000

There was an older man at a dinner party, relaying the history of his marriages. His first one, he told us, was a disaster. He was too young, she was too young. It lasted only a few years and then it ended angrily. He thought he’d never remarry, but then he decided he wanted to […]

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To Be a Ghost

Jessa Crispin — Mon, 19 May 2014 16:12:43 +0000

When It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us was published in 1996, the book was met with the kind of response that a serious nonfiction writer dreams about. The ideas presented in the book became the topic of conversation across the land, politicians and commentators felt obligated to respond to it, it […]

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Leave James Joyce Alone!

Jessa Crispin — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:12:43 +0000

On my way to the cafe here in Trieste, I walk past the Scala Dublina, the Dublin stairs. It’s number 12 on the official James Joyce tour of the city, and the rest of the walk will take you to a cafe he liked, a restaurant where he ate, the shore where he went swimming […]

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Psyched Out

Jessa Crispin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:12:43 +0000

Margaret Fuller looked around her Cambridge social circle and found her suitors lacking. The gentlemen of Cambridge looked at Margaret Fuller and found her lacking as well. This was, of course, late in the 19th century. She was not what you would call traditional marriage material. She was willful, brilliant. She loved conversation about philosophy, […]

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Murder Charges

Jessa Crispin — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 16:12:43 +0000

The discussion about the murder had been going strongly, until I offered up a roadblock. “What exactly was going on in that house?” I asked my students. Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell by Elaine Forman Crane. 256 pages. Cornell University Press. $60.95. Violette Nozière: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris by […]

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Walk Like a Man

Jessa Crispin — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:12:43 +0000

Would you be the same person if you were a different gender? Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities by Ken Corbett. 288 pages. Yale University Press. $26. The Metaphysics of Gender by Charlotte Witt. 168 pages. Oxford University Press. $24.95. Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform […]

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