So institutions are crumbling, right? The fabric of shared culture is threadbare, and our intellectual class is what you’d expect were you to put the sheep in Orwell’s Animal Farm in charge of administering doctoral dissertations. It almost makes one thankful the average American attention span is that of a moth who can’t afford his Ritalin refill—our …
This is a post for men. This is not a post for women. If you are a woman, I respectfully request that you stop reading immediately. I’m fixing to explain a couple of things, and I certainly don’t want to fall into the sin of mansplaining. So skedaddle, ladies. That includes you in the back. …
So I’m eating pineapple and considering this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners and these are not unrelated, because both activities aim at healthfulness. The truth is I’d rather be eating Krispy Kreme and reading Neuromancer, but my cholesterol has taken a slight uptick. It puts me in mind of my mortality, yet even as I approach …
They say all great men have a morning routine, so I figured I ought to rush right out and get me one of those. I’ll belabor the elements of that routine while subtly flattering myself for it some other time; the point today is that it often includes listening to Writer’s Almanac while I make …
Some of you may like my latest essay on the Good Letters channel at Patheos. It covers everything from Oliver Stone to a young Whittaker Chambers, with a slight dose of literary criticism mixed in. Here’s an excerpt: I’ve been reading recently published short fiction—in journals, in anthologies. It seems that everyone took Baxter to …
My latest short story is in the current edition of Image, for those of you with a literary bent. And for those of you bent theologically, in this case, because in my story John Calvin attends a writing workshop so he can learn to craft Christian romance novels. That’s not what the story is about, …
“They would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food. Don’t you understand? Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won’t be a robot!” “But, Ignatius, they help out a lot of people got problems.” “Do you think that I have a problem?” …
I recently discovered a delightful poem by David Kirby in Five Points, and thought I’d share a snippet of it with all of you: … and you’d think that’d settle it, that the opera lovers of Tallahassee would let go of their plow handles and wipe their sweaty brows with their bandanas and say, “Well, …
“He sat in the dappled light among the stones. A bird sang. Some leaves were falling. He sat with his hands palm up on the grass beside him like a stricken puppet and he thought no thoughts at all.” Suttree, Cormac McCarthy
Adam Roberts begins a five-part manifesto on why you should be reading poetry: “I remember, as a young person, being posed the question, ‘what kind of music do you like?,’ and coolly, sensibly replying, ‘everything but classical!’ Now, as a graduate student and adjunct professor, when I ask my students what they like to read, …
I’ve begun reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to the boys. It’s by Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux. She had me at the verse with which she begins her novel, excerpted from Stanley Kunitz’s “The Testing-Tree:” The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is …
“Hey Worm, did you see old Crumbliss in the paper this mornin? What’s he done now? They found him about six oclock this mornin under a tree in a big alfalfa field. He found the only tree in the whole field and run into it. They said when the cops come and opened the door …
“She felt justified in getting anything at all back that she could, money or anything else, as if she had once owned the earth and been dispossessed of it. She couldn’t look at anything steadily without wanting it, and what provoked her most was the thought that there might be something valuable hidden near her, …
“Like legitimate art, legitimate criticism is a tragicomic holding action against entropy.” (John Gardner, On Moral Fiction, p. 6)
Writer and teacher Nancie Atwell on the distressing need to convince government education officials of the benefits of literature: “. . . giving corporate interests a role in setting education policy is like letting foxes supervise the henhouse. These foxes are not vested in children’s reading books. They are interested in profitmaking—in selling prefab curricula, …
My friend John Miller brings the smack on modern vampires. This may be a good way to sum it up: if your bloodsucker needs hair gel, he’s really just a big thirsty sissy with bad teeth. In general, vampires ought to be scarier than personal injury attorneys. Though both species deserve a stake through their …
I’m in the midst of a writing frenzy at present, so for your reading pleasure I present an excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” which may be found in the volume of her speeches and essays, Mystery and Manners. This came to me some weeks ago courtesy of Adam DeVille, who …
Since literature seems to be the theme this week, check out Dana Gioia’s speech delivered at Stanford’s commencement exercises. Some highlights: “There is an experiment I’d love to conduct. I’d like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can …