CALL HER NATASHA WHEN SHE LOOKS LIKE ELSIE: …Marlowe’s problem is that he tries to wield women’s inscrutability fordramatic effect. His men do unexpected things because they’re tormented, orheroic, or power-mad, and unpacking his men’s little mysteries will yieldinteresting conclusions about torment, heroism, and lust for power. Isabella andZenocrate are mysterious, but reflecting on their little mysteries will justleave you thinking, “Oh, women.” …Trying to make your tragic womenclear the larger-than-life bar by using their feminine mystique (ooh,enigmatic!) is weird... Read more

“It would appear,” I tell Dr. Klinger, “that my analysis has ‘taken’; a tribute to you, sir.” He chuckles. “You were always stronger than you thought.” “I would as soon never have had to find out. And besides, it’s not so. I can’t live like this any longer.” “Yet you have, you do.”–Philip Roth, The Breast Read more

HOW TO BE BAD: I review the Shakespeare Theatre’s productions of Tamburlaine and Edward II. Also, I learn that you shouldn’t do best-of lists before the New Year; I think this is better than the Book of Jane review, and should’ve been the fifth entry in my best-of-published-Eve list. Read more

AFRESH, AFRESH, AFRESH: Best of 2007. I’m going to New Jersey tomorrow, and it’s unlikely that I’ll do more than maybe a kitchen-adventures post between now and the champagne. So I’m doing my best-ofs list now. (2006, 2005, 2004) Best books read (nonfiction): Rene Girard, The ScapegoatIris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWIIRichard Klein, Cigarettes Are SublimePhilip Roth, Reading Myself and OthersYe gods, slim pickin’s here. I’m going to cheat and name St. Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship... Read more

Tonight the blogwatch let me down…Dark October 316: “the unspeakable abyss of God’s love“ Disputations: Advent Medea and more…. First Things: Basic Christmas homily from Fr. Neuhaus, but some elements of this struck me–the helplessness of the unborn and infant Christ; & the connection between the need for bodily resurrection and the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The latter reminded me of some stuff from A Grief Observed, about the way even grief replaces the true beloved with the lover’s... Read more

Later in life, a man would expect to find in his wife the one thing that he could not expect to find among his peers–honesty. Parrhesia, unflinching frankness with one’s fellows and superiors, was an infinitely rare and precious commodity. It could be had only from the only two authoritative figures who stood to one side of political life–from a philosopher and from one’s wife.–Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity Read more

But what to me is all this quintessence of dust?—Withnail and I Read more

PROFESSIONALISM. Apparently I totally didn’t notice when my review of The Book of Jane was published on Nat’l Review Online. Some say there’s a fine line between genius and madness. The Book of Jane is a chick-lit rewriting of the Book of Job. more Read more

This movie proves you don’t need to have a good plot.–DVD commentary on Withnail & I Read more

She had thought one thousand years the limit of her time, but is confounded she even harbored such fancies. [clipped] –from “Distant Dove,” Judah Halevi, tr. Gabriel Levin Read more