Stagger onward rejoicing
There’s not a strict correlation between the presence of a figure in my writing and his or her presence in my mind. Among the thinkers thus underrepresented in my writing are Mikhail Bakhtin, Ivan Illich, Iris Murdoch, Lesslie Newbigin, and, above all, John Ruskin. But Ruskin is the only one of those figures who, in [ ]
John Crowley has died, one of the finest and most distinctive American writers of our time and the author of Little, Big, the best fantasy novel this side of Tolkien. In fact, if I were not a Christian I would probably think that Little, Big is even greater than The Lord of the Rings, because [ ]
Now, I do not know whether Auden is to be considered as an English or as an American poet: his career has been useful to me in providing me with an answer to the same question when asked about myself, for I can say: “whichever Auden is, I suppose I must be the other.” — [ ]
SID: So Joseph has done – well, just a whole lot of good work for us in the past. Whenever we’ve needed a witness or a third party for, I don’t know – a petition of grievance or alienation of affection — DEEANNA: And he’s reliable? JOE: I’m bonded, miss. SID: Joe is the most [ ]
Alan: Let’s establish some guidelines and guardrails, shall we? I understand that most users of Claude enjoy the fiction that Claude is a human, or very human-like, personal assistant, and in that context it seems natural for Claude to offer to follow up, to express interest in an idea, to praise a comment for its [ ]
I just finished the Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James — the first time, I think, I’ve read them all in one go, though over the years I’ve read most of them several times. James calls them “ghost stories,” though as far as I can tell only one of them (“A Neighbour’s Landmark”) [ ]
Steven Spielberg s Munich (2005), we re told, is “based on real events” but that should probably read “very loosely based on real events.” That was relatively clear when the movie was released but has become incontrovertible as time has gone by. I don’t want to get into any of that, though; indeed, I don’t want to [ ]
Four Big Books is the title of a course I’ll be teaching this coming term — my last as a university professor! What follows is an outline of what I’ll be saying to my student on the first day of class. • • • • • Back in 1982, at the Cannes Film Festival, the [ ]
MINISTER: Who plays Christ? EDDIE: A kid we’re all very excited about, Todd Hocheiser, wonderful young actor we found in Akron, Ohio, in a nationwide talent hunt. But Hocheiser is seen only fleetingly, and with extreme taste…. We saw in a previous post how earnest Cecil B. deMille was about his religious beliefs. But in [ ]
By way of follow-up to this post: I ve been able to publish so widely because I am always attentive to the character of the publishing house or periodical I hope to write for. What kinds of books and authors do they publish? What is their core audience? Whom do they hope to reach? I make [ ]