Your average genre novel is like a high speed car chase ending in a massive crash, with death, destruction, and balls of flame, from which the main characters (usually) emerge mostly unscathed. Everything builds up to the crash, and it’s the anticipation that keeps us turning pages. Anthony Trollope, by contrast, is like a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside in an open carriage behind a pair of matched horses. There’s conflict, sure; a herd of sheep blocks the... Read more
The best rock concert I ever went to was something of an accident. Early in 1986, my friend got four tickets to a Crosby, Stills and Nash reunion concert in Orange County, and gave two of them to Jane and I. The concert was scheduled for 8 PM, but we happened to hear on the radio that this group called The Band were going to open, starting at 7 PM or so. I’d heard of the band—”The Weight”, and “The... Read more
What Tom said: The Incarnation is not something the Son did in order to be able to reveal the Father to us thirty years later. The Incarnation is itself the revelation of the Father. Read more
Rod Dreher has asked his readers to pick three books about Christianity to recommend to those who know little about it. In response to his fairly specific ground rules, Leah Libresco picked Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton, and The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky. My favorite passage from her post: Ok, and my second choice is, also predictably, Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. If Mere Christianity helps make Christianity comprehensible, Orthodoxy makes it weird again. I hadn’t planned... Read more
In a play, the actors don’t speak to the audience they way they do to each other. To us, they say, “Is this a dagger I see before me?” and “It is the east; and Juliet is the damn-fool who is going to get me killed in the last act.” To each other they say, “You’re in my way,” and “Will you stop upstaging me?” and “Will you stop stepping on my lines?” and “Will you stop stepping on my... Read more
Here’s a truly bizarre (but fun) idea; it makes me wish I could paint: Take the sort of generic landscape paintings you find in thrift shops and paint monsters into them. Read more
Born Minerva Murphy, Pauline Privilege was a singer and band-leader in the waning years of the Big Band Era. Not only a singer but also a lyricist and arranger, she was well known for her arrangements (some said re-arrangements) of such popular tunes as “I Can’t Get Started,” “Tipi-Tipi Time’s Up,” “One O’Clock Stump,” and “It’s Over.” She was a lively performer, interspersing her songs with comic patter and bad jokes. The name of her band, the Annulments, was both... Read more
The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience. — Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility Read more
Patricia Wrede says: Sometimes it seems that there are a zillion different metaphors for how writers construct a plot. There’s the sculpture metaphor (carve away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant). There’s the pottery-making metaphor (add a lump of clay, work it until you have the center, then shape and add more clay as and where needed). There’s the jewelry metaphor (like stringing different colored beads in a pleasing pattern) and the quilt-making metaphor (combining small scraps of different-colored... Read more
I’ve been aware of story-teller H. Rider Haggard since I was a kid, when my mom bought me a copy of King Solomon’s Mines to take with me on a trip. Alas, the back-cover blurb put me off, and it was several years before I actually read it; but when I did I was enchanted. He’s also the author of She, and is thus the source of the title “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” applied by John Mortimer’s Rumpole of... Read more
Cry 'Woof'
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In