December 2010
“‘The universal reaction to book lists,’ I wrote a few days ago,...”
– D. G. Myers
“Now that I have a family of my own, we do observe the changing of the calendar...”
– David Bentley Hart
posts unwritten, end-of-year edition, part 2 →
How interesting would it be to have a writer’s every keystroke recorded and played back? Pretty interesting, perhaps, but I don’t want it to happen to me.
Though I think Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon…
opting out, revisited →
Regular readers, if I have any regular readers, will know that this is the kind of thing I strongly disagree with: Overwhelmed by all the noise, some have simply chosen to block it out — to opt…
“In the late ’90s I started an awkward—some might say excruciating and...”
– Stephen Metcalf (from an essay on the late Denis Dutton)
“Research has been done on how the internet affects us, but because I don’t...”
– Yiyun Li - My afternoons with Montaigne
does anything change anything? →
Marshall Poe says that “the Internet changes nothing”: The media experts, however, tell us that there really is something new and transformative about the Internet. It goes under various names,…
“Books contain the most carefully crafted and edited text that we have – truly...”
– FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Accessing the e-book revolution
“I would offer up ‘coolly extravagant’ to describe Bronzino’s...”
– The Drawings of Bronzino | Brett Foster | Books & Culture
“I’d guess that most organizations a generation from now will be pretty small by...”
– Why Wikileaks Will Kill Big Business And Big Government | The New Republic
“The best thing about America is its universities. Not Harvard, Yale, e tutti...”
– Tony Judt, from The Memory Chalet, quoted here.
“I find that it is much more for most men’s good and edification, to...”
– Richard Baxter
“Handed-down wisdom and worked-up information remain the double piers of a cook’s...”
– What : The New Yorker
“To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over...”
– John Ruskin, from Modern Painters
Andrew Hudgins, "The Cestello Annunciation"
The angel has already said, Be not afraid.
He’s said, The power of the Most High
will darken you. Her eyes are downcast and half closed.
And there’s a long pause — a pause here of forever —
as the angel crowds her. She backs away,
her left side pressed against the picture frame.
He kneels. He’s come in all unearthly innocence
to tell her of glory — not knowing, not remembering
how...
“Let no man deceive himself; if by vulgarity we mean coarseness of speech,...”
– G.K. Chesterton, ‘Christmas and the Aesthetes’ (1905) in Heretics. The Project Gutenberg Project.
G. K. Chesterton, "Christmas Poem"
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is...
“To declare God’s goodness, that hath enabled us to speak, we are bound to...”
– John Donne
“Unfortunately for the US State Department, they clearly shouldn’t have been...”
– Bruce Sterling
“Writing a book is like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle, unendurably slow at first,...”
– James Richardson
“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have...”
– Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941)
“While it’s stated like a given, the idea that the number of evangelicals...”
– Evangelicals are greener than you think | Grist
“Cow Clicker is a Facebook game about Facebook games. It’s partly a satire,...”
– Ian Bogost - Cow Clicker. Warning: follow that link only if you’re interested in game theory, not just the ability to click on virtual cows.
“There are many people – happy people, it usually appears – whose thoughts at...”
– (via wwnorton)
Andrew Hudgins, "Praying Drunk"
Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat. She...
“Both Newman’s attraction to Catholicism and his hesitation in embracing it...”
– Eamon Duffy
“Without the holy night, there is no theology. ‘God is revealed in...”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
metadata and our discontents →
See that? Huge spike on the word “internet” in … 1903. Natalie Binder explains why Google’s really bad metadata is going to limit the usefulness of the word-hoard it is…
WatchMakoto Fujimura’s Four Holy Gospels
“Putnam and Campbell are quantitative, liberal, and upbeat; Hunter is...”
– A Tough Season for Believers - NYTimes.com
“Most of the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures see the divine realm as quite...”
– The Book of Genesis, part 1: God created | Jane Williams | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
“All of the disciplines are increasingly identifiable as professionalisms, which...”
– Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle
“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and...”
– C. S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books”
“Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have...”
– Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic | The Economist
“The American corporate model looks a little battered at the moment, while...”
– Anthony Grafton