Everett's magnificently searching performance shows you the nobility and the folly, the humane self-sacrifice and the calamitous obduracy of this stance.
The wit, the humane impulses, the mixture of self-awareness and self-deception, the glints of charm, make of Christian and Kirsten far more than what they represent.
The rewards of this approach become apparent when one compares the beguiling, humane, and self-observant character whose poetic wryness reverberates throughout "Revelations" to the stock tragic figure of the tortured artist enshrined in the only biography of Arbus that existed until this autumn.
After the theological severity of Wood's first collection, "The Broken Estate," the humane, secular emphasis of "The Irresponsible Self" -- a book about the novel's comic consolations rather than its religious agonies -- comes as something of a relief.
The Emersonian vision of self-reliance inspired both the humane philosopher, John Dewey, and the first Henry Ford (circulator of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion ).
Writing in The Times, Michiko Kakutani praised the "humane and deeply affecting memoir," but noted that some of the scenes "can feel self-consciously novelistic at times".
This is the humane thing to do.
She's the humane, inquisitive, incorruptible observer".
"It was the humane thing to do".
But is publicly supporting addiction the humane thing to do?
The logical answer, in this case, is the humane one.
