“THE PROPER BASIS FOR MARRIAGE IS A MUTUAL MISUNDERSTANDING“: Notes I didn’t use for my review of Premarital Sex in America. Sorry about the length! I thought this book did a good job of advancing the ball in terms of our understanding of American ideas about marriage and sex. It’s worth your time. Everything that follows is something I thought as a result of this book, not necessarily something the book said itself, unless it’s in quotation marks. Oh, and:... Read more

“Have you seen the listening snake?”bramble clutches for his bride,Lately she was by his side,Woodbine, with her gummy hands. In the ground the mottled snakeListens for the dawn of day;Listens, listening death away,Till the day burst winter’s bands.–from John Gray, “The Vines–To Andre Chevrillon,” whole thing here Read more

“BREAKING ‘THE RULES’“: In which I review a couple books: Why don’t Americans know how to get and stay married? Whatever we think the word means we still value marriage very highly: The National Marriage Project and the Gallup poll organization have found that between 80 and 90 percent of American teens want to get married someday. And yet we delay, we divorce, and we churn through relationships so quickly that in 2004 only 61 percent of American children were... Read more

IT’S LIKE THEY KNOW ME. Read more

Last night as I was sleeping,I dreamt—marvelous error!—that I had a beehivehere inside my heart.And the golden beeswere making white combsand sweet honeyfrom my old failures.–Antonio Machado; whole thing is here Read more

SINCE IT’S THE FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (for two more hours), here’s Peggy Fleming, “Ave Maria.” (And Nicole Bobek’s lovely program from the same event.) Read more

DO THE RIGHT THING: I don’t care much about Tolkein, but I liked how this post (via Wesley Hill) delineates two different kinds of morality tale: the one about the difficulty of knowing which choice is right, and the one about the difficulty of doing the good even when you know it. Tangentially: I’ve just watched two recent adaptations of Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. I really don’t approve of how much they mistrust... Read more

NEW YORK TIMES STORY BINGO 2011. Not always quite on-target (the aura-cleansing one) and it’s not like Fashion Week clothes are supposed to be off-the-rack wearable, but enough of this works that I will allow it. Via IP, but I’m adding this lady to the blogroll because she is funny and interesting and so are her commenters. Read more

AN OPIUM-ADDICTED SAINT. And one who was actually forbidden to receive Communion for decades due to his addiction. Read more

AND THE RED DEATH HELD DOMINION OVER ALL! Christopher Coe’s I Look Divine is a slender, self-consciously perfect little poison gem of a book. It’s a novel about two brothers in the 1960s through the 1980s: the narrator is obsessed with his brother Nicholas, and Nicholas is enraptured by himself. The book begins as the narrator is preparing to clean out Nicholas’s apartment after his untimely death, and so a lot of the glassy humor has a dark tinge. This... Read more