Chad Holley is a dear friend of mine, but I wouldn’t say this if it weren’t true: his new novel Shield the Joyous is a beautiful and moving book. It’s most obviously a book about boyhood — boyhood in the American Deep South at a certain moment in history, yes, but more accurately … | Continue reading
From an email to a British friend One more contributor to Trump’s win that hasn’t been sufficiently acknowledged: it’s one of the consequences of the collapse of labor unions. My father (Teamsters) and my paternal grandfather (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen) wer … | Continue reading
Interrupting my hiatus for a quick thought: Return with me, children, to the days before the recent election. Jason Kottke and John Gruber really liked this brief NYT editorial. And “really liked” is an understatement. Kottke: “Each of those links is like a fist pounding on the d … | Continue reading
The Finnish comedian Ismo has a nice routine in which he describes how hard it is to learn the nuances of spoken English. The best-known part of the routine (justifiably!) is when he explains why he thinks the most complicated word in English is “ass.” But I also like his comment … | Continue reading
Jessa Crispin: Is it important to read Faulkner? Probably not, but I think you should do it anyway. (I don’t like Faulkner, just fyi.) Because it’s good to do difficult things. Because hating something can be as interesting, sometimes more, as loving something. Is reading Faulkne … | Continue reading
So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwill … | Continue reading
I’ve tried a number of times over the years to read Terry Pratchett, without success or a great deal of enjoyment. But that may be a result of my starting with the early novels, when he was still learning the craft. In any case, he has now clicked for me in a way that promises [… … | Continue reading
Mary Harrington’s three essays on Renaud Camus and the implications of his work are fascinating. One: “In what follows, the first of a three-part series, I’ll argue with Camus that replacism is not a conspiracy. And yet, polemic aside, it addresses something real: a structural bl … | Continue reading
In (Partial) Defence of Jeff Bezos – by Ian Leslie: In the early twentieth century, as information became more valuable, newspapers put more emphasis on being accurate reporters of reality. Journalism developed into a profession with a commitment to the truth regardless of politi … | Continue reading
Elisa Gabbert, “The Essay as Realm”: This lecture I’ve been working on has itself become a place. It started as notes, ideas on paper, but as I built them into sentences and paragraphs it took on the impression of a frame. There’s a point when the frame seems finished; I’m reluct … | Continue reading
David Brooks: In days gone by, parties were political organizations designed to win elections and gain power. Party leaders would expand their coalitions toward that end. Today, on the other hand, in an increasingly secular age, political parties are better seen as religious orga … | Continue reading
A number of people I know and respect — including Phil Christman — think that Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book The Message is a very good one. I, on the other hand, believe it to be one of the worst books that I’ve read in years. Normally when I bounce off a book that hard I […] | Continue reading
Charlie Warzel: The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter n … | Continue reading
Hey, AI Week at Baylor is coming! And to judge from that webpage, Baylor is the place to be if you want to feel really good about the giant AI companies. But if you want to think about how those companies — especially now that OpenAI is abandoning its nonprofit status — follow in … | Continue reading
So I’ve done three Auden Critical Editions now, and each time I have experienced much joy in the labor … but also some frustration afterwards when discovering things I missed. It’s not surprising, of course! Auden was staggeringly widely-read and had an exceptionally adhesive min … | Continue reading
A while back I wrote a post about my financial history as a writer, situations in which I have made money, situations in which I haven’t made money, etc. Phil Christman does his version of that post here, and adds a taxonomy of writers based largely (though not wholly) on the res … | Continue reading
Adam Roberts’s recent post on images of Saturn gave me a flashback — a sudden return to a moment fifteen years ago when I was working on a critical edition of Auden’s long poem The Age of Anxiety. One passage especially puzzled me: For athwart our thinking the threat looms, Huge … | Continue reading
I haven’t been writing here much lately. I’ve been busy with teaching, of course, but that I’m used to. No, I have been absent from the blog because of an avalanche of administrivia — forms to fill out, mandatory Zoom meetings, online “trainings.” There are trainings about Title … | Continue reading
I’ve seen a great many essays of this kind over the decades. I’m no longer surprised by them — I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused — but we shouldn’t forget that the radical parochialism of elite opinion is quite a remarkable thing. Manvir Singh thinks Christianity … | Continue reading
One: The world of economic commodification and the enchanted world are not mutually exclusive, as Hope Mirrlees’s great novel Lud-in-the-Mist demonstrates. Two: Jesus’s conquest of the Powers begins by his exposing them for what they are, which is to say, with demystification. In … | Continue reading
Every now and then I check back with Google Gemini and ChatGPT to see how they’re doing — and especially how they handle tasks my students might ask them to do. This morning it occurred to me that some of my first-years who are supposed to be reading Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Nine … | Continue reading
This is an excellent essay by Mark Edmundson, so of course I am going to write about the part I disagree with: I like to teach a class on Milton and Whitman. I do so from a political vantage, seeing Whitman as an archetypal progressive, a breaker of boundaries, an opener of new r … | Continue reading
If you search for “why don’t we build beautiful buildings any more” or any similar combination of terms you’ll get a great many articles, essays, blog posts, and YouTube videos on the subject. (Ross Douthat’s column is an especially good one.) Most of them agree with the question … | Continue reading
David French: Pope Francis wasn’t watering down the Christian faith; he was expressing existential humility. He was unwilling to state, definitively, the mind of God and to pass judgment on the souls of others. His words were surprising not because they were heretical in any way, … | Continue reading
Also: Every time I get to the copy-editing stage of a book project I want to write a long angry post about how much I hate Microsoft Word. But I have done it, and other people have done it. Here I am in 2016. And here’s Charlie Stross back in 2013: The reason I want […] | Continue reading
In the long slow complicated process that leads to the publication of a book — in this case, my biography of Paradise Lost — I am at the copy-editing stage, and whenever I am at that stage with a book, I remember Lauren Lepow. In the publishing world, there are many different kin … | Continue reading
Like many of my posts, this one is a kind of sketch or draft of ideas I want to develop more fully later. Last year I wrote a post about maps of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and mentioned in passing that the book’s scenes veer from hard-coded allegory to plain realism, sometimes … | Continue reading
First there was the Bacon Number. Then there was the Erdös Number. Then there was the Erdös-Bacon Number. I feel that there ought to be a whole new set of numbers prompted by the remarkable life of Terrence Malick. For instance: Malick as a young scholar met Martin Heidegger, and … | Continue reading
The story so far: My post on the recent vogue for “enchantment” Brad East’s reply Me again Brad again I think we’re converging on a shared position — mostly. Brad is less persuaded than I am by the argument that Judaism and Christianity are disenchanting forces in relation to the … | Continue reading
Can We Talk! | Ian Frazier: Unexpected languages turn up all over. Daniel Kaufman, another of the ELA’s codirectors, learned some Tagalog (a language of the Philippines) from a man he played speed chess with in Washington Square Park. At the bodega across West 18th Street from th … | Continue reading
Mary Beard: Harrison’s reputation rested on her public performances, where she stripped away the technicalities and was (as she put it herself in Reminiscences) ‘almost fatally fluent’. Flamboyantly dressed and armed with what were hailed as the most up-to-the-minute visual aids, … | Continue reading
In response to my recent post, Brad East defines enchantment as: a true apprehension of reality as it actually is: the fallen but good handiwork of a loving Creator; the recipient of his lasting care and unfailing providence; the medium of astonishing beauty; the impress of his g … | Continue reading
It seems that “enchantment” is having a moment right now — e.g. — and, well, okay, but I’d like to make two points: Experiencing the world as enchanted has absolutely nothing to do with acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that at the end of history every knee will bow an … | Continue reading
Peter Hitchens: I think [Arthur] Koestler is increasingly forgotten because there has never been a time when the past has been such an unmapped mystery to the young and to the middle-aged. Hardly anyone now knows what she or he ought to know, ought to have read, ought to have see … | Continue reading
I have to think that “Against Rereading,” by Oscar Schwartz, is a massive troll, because the alternative — that Schwartz believes himself to be so omnicompetent a reader, so perfect in his perception, so masterful in his judgment, that he absorbs all that even the greatest book h … | Continue reading
Vanishing Culture: On 78s | Internet Archive Blogs: The cultural record of the 20th century is different from all other periods of human history by the presence of audiovisual recordings. Prior to 1877, there was no way to record the sound of a nursery rhyme being read at bedtime … | Continue reading
On sale May 27, 2025. Now, back to copyediting the damned thing. | Continue reading
Abolish Grades (A Modest Proposal) – Yascha Mounk: The grading system at American universities is an embarrassment. The best solution would be to take the simple, if somewhat brutal, steps to end grade inflation. But if that is not in the cards, then it’s time for universities to … | Continue reading
(I share these tips with all my first-years.) There are five vital elements. Ready? Here goes: Wash your hands thoroughly and often. You don’t want to get sick, and you don’t want to make other people sick. Buy, get used to, and regularly wear earplugs for sleep. A lack of sleep … | Continue reading
Charles Dickens: We must assume that we are not singular in entertaining a very great tenderness for the fairy literature of our childhood. What enchanted us then, and is captivating a million of young fancies now, has, at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of me … | Continue reading
Many years ago I came upon an odd little book, a prayer book compiled in the 1880s by one S. M. Hopkins of Auburn Theological Seminary. Apparently he didn’t like any existing prayer book and so decided to assemble his own. I don’t think anything in the book is original, but, madd … | Continue reading
Around fifteen years ago I published these thoughts in First Things. I’m reposting here because I am re-reading Grahame’s great book right now and taking my usual comfort and delight from it. The Annotated Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, edited by Annie Gauger. W.W. Norto … | Continue reading
When you awaken, will be it be like this? Only if it’s like this first: | Continue reading
A fabulous extended metaphor from Dorothy L. Sayers’s essay on how she learned Latin: The mighty forest of syntax opened up its glades to exploration, adorned with its three monumental trees — the sturdy accusative and infinitive, the graceful ablative absolute, and the banyan-li … | Continue reading
Lately I’ve been reading my old friend William Blake — about whom more in due course — and I am struck by the simple fact that in his vast and strange mythology the primeval giant Albion is asleep. As, by and large, are we, his children. Blake perceives our frivolous attachment t … | Continue reading
I recently got a wonderful email from my student Annalise Shero, who is spending what we here in Texas call “summer” in Sydney, Australia. (Which sounds pretty great.) With her permission, I’m sharing her message below. Last semester in Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Cent … | Continue reading
That’s a portrait of Mildred Katherine Pope (1872-1956). There are periods of history in which, for certain people, all the doors they would most want to pass through are closed, locked, and barred, and nothing can be done about that. Then there are periods when all those doors a … | Continue reading