Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Virtues of Disillusionment
    The Virtues of Disillusionment
    The Virtues of Disillusionment
    Ebook45 pages33 minutes

    The Virtues of Disillusionment

    By Steven Heighton and Angie Abdou

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Most people go through life chasing illusions of success, fame, wealth, happiness, and few things are more painful than the reality-revealing loss of an illusion. But if illusions are negative, why is the opposite, being disillusioned, also negative? In this essay based on his inaugural writer-in-residence lecture at Athabasca University, internationally acclaimed writer Steven Heighton mathematically evaluates the paradox of disillusionment and the negative aspects of hope. Drawing on writers such as Herman Melville, Leonard Cohen, Kate Chopin, and Thich Nhat Hanh, Heighton considers the influence of illusions on creativity, art, and society. This meditation on language and philosophy reveals the virtues of being disillusioned and, perhaps, the path to freedom.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAthabasca University Press
    Release dateSep 16, 2020
    ISBN9781771993258
    The Virtues of Disillusionment
    Author

    Steven Heighton

    Steven Heighton’s most recent books are a novel, The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep, and a poetry collection, The Waking Comes Late, which received the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His novel Afterlands has appeared in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review editors’ Choice, and is in pre-production for film. He has taught creative writing or served as a writer in residence for McGill University, Massey College, Queen's, Concordia, the Banff Centre, UPEI, the University of Ottawa, SLS, Sage Hill, and, currently, Athabasca University.

    Read more from Steven Heighton

    Related to The Virtues of Disillusionment

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Time Is Now

      Jun 13, 2018

      Although we often associate travel writing with essays about journeys or roadtrip novels, poetry has had a long, rich history of association with travel. Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century poems explore wanderlust and faraway locales and new mode

      2 min read

    • Article

      Morgan Talty

      Jun 15, 2022

      Morgan Talty
      4 min read

    • Article

      Memory Can Be a Second Chance: Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’

      Aug 22, 2019

      Thoughtful and tender, Vuong's autobiographical novel is framed as a letter from a son, Little Dog, to his illiterate single mother, Rose. The post Memory Can Be a Second Chance: Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ appeared first on The M

      6 min read

    • Article

      Recent Winners

      Aug 17, 2022

      Four poets won the 2022 Discovery Poetry Contest. They are Jada Renée Allen of Chicago, Sasha Burshteyn of New York City, April Goldman of Lake Tahoe, California, and Kristina Martino. They each received $500, publication of their work in the Paris R

      24 min read

    • Article

      Country Music

      Mar 1, 2022

      Ifeanyi says in his country a babyIs It until it learns to be one of Us. I am in my Igbo second infancy.The coral, a quarrel, a glacier, my lungs. The weather, the world, the book review.Lyrical bitching. Biblical plaint. Infant debt of attention aga

      1 min read

    • Article

      Action, Gesture, Paint

      Mar 1, 2023

      Action, Gesture, Paint
      4 min read

    • Article

      Notes And Outtakes

      Jun 1, 2023

      At the age of 92, John McPhee would seem to have earned a rest. The author of more than 30 books, he has been writing for six decades for The New Yorker, where the reporting in many of those volumes first appeared. The John McPhee Reader has been a s

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Kidsin America

      Aug 15, 2023

      The Kidsin America
      4 min read

    • Article

      “IN HER LIGHT” Toward A Poetics Of Humility

      Mar 1, 2020

      In his seminal essay on virtue, Emmanuel Levinas observes, “Humility is not to be confused with an equivocal negation of one’s Self, already proud of its virtue, which in reflection, it immediately recognizes in itself.” Here Levinas rightly calls ou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      I am walking through the hotelEvery time I am so sadThat I want to die It’s a place where I can keepEverything I’ve never beenBrave enough to get to Poets have moons and moneyTo get themselves throughThe longest night imaginable But I’ve had these ro

      3 min read

    • Article

      Enough About Ken

      Aug 1, 2023

      Enough About Ken
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mannered, Pretty 'Upstate' Is Quiet To A Fault

      Jun 7, 2018

      Critic and novelist James Wood has often dinged other writers for what he calls "hysterical realism," but his new novel Upstate — while beautifully written — goes too far in the other direction.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Nocturne for Eurydice

      Mar 15, 2022

      for “the maiden in her dark, pale meadow” Twilight through the roof of a rain forestshatters like a chandelier of green glass,the shrillness strafed by keening cicadasand unseen flocks of cockatoos that cawtheir catcalls at the meltdown of the sun. D

      2 min read

    • Article

      Compost Offering

      Nov 25, 2022

      Compost Offering
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2022

      Nothing is as important to our ability to survive as our ability to hurt. -Haider Warraich, The Song of Our Scars, 2022 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. -William Blake, T

      4 min read

    • Article

      Think Different

      Jul 5, 2022

      Think Different
      7 min read

    • Article

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff

      Aug 6, 2020

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff
      1 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jun 5, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Virtues of Disillusionment

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Virtues of Disillusionment - Steven Heighton

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1