{"id":104844,"date":"2016-11-15T15:30:46","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T20:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=104844"},"modified":"2016-11-15T15:30:46","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T20:30:46","slug":"meeting-ones-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting One\u2019s Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our newest correspondent\u00a0is\u00a0Megan Mayhew Bergman, who will be writing about naturalism. For her first piece she considers the writer Alan<\/em>\u00a0Watts and the \u201cage of environmental anxiety.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Eric<\/a>

Eric Ravilious, Wet Afternoon<\/i>, 1928, watercolor.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

For the others, like me, there is only the flash
Of negative knowledge, the night when, drunk, one
Staggers to the bathroom and stares in the glass
To meet one\u2019s madness<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/em>W. H. Auden, \u201cThe Age of Anxiety\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Living in rural Vermont, I enjoy proximity to wilderness, though I observe its sickness at close range. In spring, my family marks the return of swallows and red-winged blackbirds on the barn door. But the migrations are off, and the frosts are late, the harvests erratic, and the thaws early. Though the landscape looks bucolic, and the foliage bright, industrial perfluorooctanioic acid poisons our wells and the herons in town fish from polluted ponds. This year, the maple season started three weeks earlier than ever recorded, and some ski resorts saw only a few days of snow.<\/p>\n

In the last decade, as I\u2019ve followed the harrowing environmental data, I\u2019ve experienced sharp pangs of human guilt and fear of the future. Fortunately, I\u2019m able to turn to books like medicine in times of crisis. Recently, on an eighty-five degree October day, my crimson dahlias unusually fat and healthy outside, I felt my anxiety bloom and looked to Alan Watts\u2019s The Wisdom of Insecurity, A Message for an Age of Anxiety<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The title is a nod to W.H. Auden\u2019s long, psycho-historical poem \u201cThe Age of Anxiety,\u201d written in 1947, and considered by many to be the christening of a new era. Watts believed that the key to man\u2019s psychological security was to cease obsession with the future and material wealth. In prose befitting both a stylist and a serious thinker, he discussed sex, cheap food, ancient Chinese art and Buddhist narratives. He urged readers to accept the wisdom of the body and inhabit the richness of the present.<\/p>\n

One hopes philosophical texts endure, that emotional truth is timeless. But it occurs to me my literary medicine may be out of date. Watts wrote\u00a0Age of Anxiety<\/em>\u00a0in 1951, when Truman and Churchill were still in power, and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll and Salinger were fresh. In it, he cautioned against filling one\u2019s ears with the continuous information stream from \u201clavish radios\u201d\u2014a media diet resulting in \u201corgasms without release\u201d\u2014warning even then about \u201cinsatiability\u201d and \u201cconstant titillation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Eric<\/a>

Eric Ravilious, Windmill<\/i>, 1934, graphite & watercolor.<\/p><\/div>\n

The call for a return to simplicity is seductive, and Watts was not above romanticizing the primitive. He lamented the modern woman\u2019s move to the \u201ccomplicated hospital\u201d and lauded women who could \u201cdeliver themselves of a child while working out in the fields, and, after doing the few things necessary to see that the baby is safe, warm, and comfortable, resume their work as before.\u201d Though the capitalistic turn on reproductive health is certainly problematic, any woman who delivered a child while working in a field would surely invite Watts to experience the same and revise his rumination on the \u201cdisease of civilized man.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a modern-day return to the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014an idealized, media-free existence in which we trust the instinctual knowledge of our bodies\u2014is nearly fantasy, Watts was prescient about our hunger for a \u201cstream of stimulants\u201d and its resulting nervous strain. He figured humans were \u201cincreasingly incapable of real pleasure\u201d and were moving away from the material in exchange for \u201cby-products, flavors, and atmospheres.\u201d He likened the human desire for nice homes, cheap food divorced from labor, and civilized sex to a gaseous and \u201cimpressive front.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watts feared, in 1951, that we had already left the body behind and entered into a more impotent existence centered in the mind. The human fascination with the past and future, and our \u201ccerebral fantasies,\u201d was the sign of a maladaptive organ: the human brain. He believed that hyper-rationalizing our desires creates a vicious and taxing cycle, a habitual state of tension and abstraction that is actually a mental disorder. The \u201cwrithing and whirling\u201d of the human mind, to Watts, is unnecessary and actually threatens man\u2019s happiness and survival by removing him from a physical existence, one more at home and peace in the natural world. The contemporary human mind is therefore not unlike the burdensome antlers of the Irish elk, the flightlessness of the dodo, or the self-immolation of moths. It is a negative byproduct of a hominid\u2019s biological evolution\u2014a more complex brain whose prodigious ability to model the future divides us from the world and time where we belong. The split between the brain and the body, Watts believed, is not unlike the split between man and nature. Both result in insecurity and anxiety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eric<\/a>

Eric Ravilious, The Wilmington Giant<\/i>, 1939, watercolor.<\/p><\/div>\n

Fear is a timeless state of mind, as old as our struggle for survival as a species, and Watts allowed that it is human nature to crave escape from the reality of the anxiety-inducing present. He felt we spend too much time obsessing over the future, which is not real. Yet, ironically, <\/b>it is this inability to acknowledge the future that led us across the tipping point in 2012, sixty years after\u00a0The Wisdom of Insecurity<\/i>, when carbon dioxide levels rose above \u201cthe point of no return.\u201d Scientists are nearly certain that we\u2019ve eliminated our ability to reverse course; we can only slow or hasten the degradation of our habitat.\u00a0That sheer inevitability bewilders me.\u00a0Now, with our future president\u2019s fundamental denial of climate change, citizens are left to cope with a legitimate fear of the future. We can no longer afford the luxury of looking away.<\/p>\n

Just this spring, I sat in my living room and watched a plump robin hurl itself over and over into a window pane, fighting its own visage reflected in the clear glass. This has always seemed an apt metaphor of anxiety to me, fighting a demon of your own creation you can\u2019t touch or name, exhausting yourself with nothing to show for your labor. Watts would note that more worry creates a vicious and useless cycle, and uses an image of Ouroboros, the ancient snake eating its own tail, to illustrate that point. In his conclusion, Watts recounts a story from a Chinese sage that echoes the exit of Hell in Dante\u2019s\u00a0Divine Comedy<\/em>. \u201cHow shall we escape the heat?\u201d the sage is asked. His answer is unsettling: \u201cGo right into the middle of the fire.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Megan Mayhew Bergman is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Almost Famous Women<\/a>\u00a0and one of the Daily\u2019s correspondents.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our newest correspondent\u00a0is\u00a0Megan Mayhew Bergman, who will be writing about naturalism. For her first piece she considers the writer Alan\u00a0Watts and the \u201cage of environmental anxiety.\u201d For the others, like me, there is only the flashOf negative knowledge, the night when, drunk, oneStaggers to the bathroom and stares in the glassTo meet one\u2019s madness \u2014W. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22700],"tags":[1000,7009,9517,7393,25715,25709,25706,6500,25718,2930,11950,171,25704,14380,4367,23589,7599,25717,25710,25711,25703,13438,1022,7403,25708,25707,25716,7355,16309,24717,1672,23724,25702,25714,25712,25713,25705,1473,2160,1849,75],"class_list":["post-104844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-correspondents","tag-alan-watts","tag-anxiety","tag-apocalypse","tag-birds","tag-brain-and-body","tag-cerebral-fantasies","tag-churchhill","tag-climate-change","tag-dahlias","tag-dante","tag-divine-comedy","tag-environment","tag-farm","tag-fear","tag-flowers","tag-global-warming","tag-happiness","tag-harvests","tag-humanity","tag-insecurity","tag-migrations","tag-naturalism","tag-nature","tag-philosophy","tag-prescience","tag-primitive","tag-rural","tag-science","tag-seasons","tag-simplicity","tag-snow","tag-species","tag-the-age-of-anxiety","tag-the-point-of-no-return","tag-the-wisdom-of-insecurity","tag-tipping-point","tag-truman","tag-vermont","tag-w-h-auden","tag-wilderness","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlan Watts and the Age of Environmental Anxiety<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Looking for lessons in the age of climate change, Megan Mayhew Bergman rereads Watts\u2019s 1951 naturalist classic.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meeting One\u2019s Madness by Megan Mayhew Bergman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 15, 2016 \u2013 Our newest correspondent\u00a0is\u00a0Megan Mayhew Bergman, who will be writing about naturalism. For her first piece she considers the writer Alan\u00a0Watts and the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-11-15T20:30:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Megan Mayhew Bergman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Megan Mayhew Bergman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Megan Mayhew Bergman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2f664ea9a0b870019b2588653165ac51\"},\"headline\":\"Meeting One\u2019s Madness\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-11-15T20:30:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\"},\"wordCount\":1128,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alan Watts\",\"anxiety\",\"apocalypse\",\"birds\",\"brain and body\",\"cerebral fantasies\",\"Churchhill\",\"climate change\",\"dahlias\",\"Dante\",\"Divine Comedy\",\"environment\",\"farm\",\"fear\",\"flowers\",\"global warming\",\"happiness\",\"harvests\",\"humanity\",\"insecurity\",\"migrations\",\"naturalism\",\"nature\",\"philosophy\",\"prescience\",\"primitive\",\"rural\",\"science\",\"seasons\",\"simplicity\",\"snow\",\"species\",\"The Age of Anxiety\",\"the point of no return\",\"The Wisdom of Insecurity\",\"tipping point\",\"Truman\",\"Vermont\",\"W. H. Auden\",\"wilderness\",\"writing\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Our Correspondents\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\",\"name\":\"Alan Watts and the Age of Environmental Anxiety\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-11-15T20:30:46+00:00\",\"description\":\"Looking for lessons in the age of climate change, Megan Mayhew Bergman rereads Watts\u2019s 1951 naturalist classic.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Meeting One\u2019s Madness\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2f664ea9a0b870019b2588653165ac51\",\"name\":\"Megan Mayhew Bergman\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/628c06b0af7b0c423e528f78dfa825db0f5cfe1b5bdfb745c2d4d24096464189?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/628c06b0af7b0c423e528f78dfa825db0f5cfe1b5bdfb745c2d4d24096464189?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Megan Mayhew Bergman\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/megan-mayhew-bergman\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Alan Watts and the Age of Environmental Anxiety","description":"Looking for lessons in the age of climate change, Megan Mayhew Bergman rereads Watts\u2019s 1951 naturalist classic.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Meeting One\u2019s Madness by Megan Mayhew Bergman","og_description":"November 15, 2016 \u2013 Our newest correspondent\u00a0is\u00a0Megan Mayhew Bergman, who will be writing about naturalism. For her first piece she considers the writer Alan\u00a0Watts and the","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-11-15T20:30:46+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":675,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Megan Mayhew Bergman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Megan Mayhew Bergman","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/"},"author":{"name":"Megan Mayhew Bergman","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2f664ea9a0b870019b2588653165ac51"},"headline":"Meeting One\u2019s Madness","datePublished":"2016-11-15T20:30:46+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/"},"wordCount":1128,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg","keywords":["Alan Watts","anxiety","apocalypse","birds","brain and body","cerebral fantasies","Churchhill","climate change","dahlias","Dante","Divine Comedy","environment","farm","fear","flowers","global warming","happiness","harvests","humanity","insecurity","migrations","naturalism","nature","philosophy","prescience","primitive","rural","science","seasons","simplicity","snow","species","The Age of Anxiety","the point of no return","The Wisdom of Insecurity","tipping point","Truman","Vermont","W. H. Auden","wilderness","writing"],"articleSection":["Our Correspondents"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/","name":"Alan Watts and the Age of Environmental Anxiety","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg","datePublished":"2016-11-15T20:30:46+00:00","description":"Looking for lessons in the age of climate change, Megan Mayhew Bergman rereads Watts\u2019s 1951 naturalist classic.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/wet-afternoon.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/15\/meeting-ones-madness\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Meeting One\u2019s Madness"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2f664ea9a0b870019b2588653165ac51","name":"Megan Mayhew Bergman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/628c06b0af7b0c423e528f78dfa825db0f5cfe1b5bdfb745c2d4d24096464189?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/628c06b0af7b0c423e528f78dfa825db0f5cfe1b5bdfb745c2d4d24096464189?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Megan Mayhew Bergman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/megan-mayhew-bergman\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104844"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104859,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104844\/revisions\/104859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}