Today in class, a passage about the cook Franca preparing a meal in N. K. Jemisin's "L'Alchimista" (2018) led us to consider its implicit aesthetic theories. I proposed the "disinterestedness" of the perception of beauty in Immanuel Kant's "Kritik der Urteilskraft" (1790). But the discussion brought up the concept of the "impersonal", so I mentioned T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919)—which several of the students had recently discussed in another class. Paraphrasing Eliot, the cook "cannot reach [...] impersonality without surrendering [herself] wholly to the work to be done." Or as Jemisin put it, "while she worked, [...] her mind focused wholly on the marvel of creation." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 October 2026)