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Samuel Beckett on TV?
I flipped on the TV and caught an episode of Judging Amy that I’d never seen. The themes were grief, and finding the strength to trust or love again. In one scene Amy visits her brother who’s in the...
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Anonymous
Anonymous speculates that William Shakespeare didn’t write his plays and offers a theory that the 17th Earl of Oxford did. Though I don’t buy this idea because I do think genius springs up in all...
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Poem of the Week
On Flunking a Nice Boy Out of School I wish I could teach you how ugly decency and humility can be when they are not the election of a contained mind but only the defenses of an incompetent. Were you...
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Poem of the Week
In Heaven It Is Always Autumn by Elizabeth Spires “In Heaven It Is Always Autumn” John Donne In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near to falling there but never fall, and pairs of...
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Good Stories: What Christians Can Offer
Yep, I think we need to work and think really hard to offer the world the sort of stories Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Françoise Mauriac, Dostoevsky and Victor Hugo offered. But it would be worth it....
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Poem of the Week
Love at First Sight by Wislawa Szymborska They’re both convinced that a sudden passion joined them. Such certainty is more beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still. Since they’d never met...
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The High Window
[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered. The New Yorker. I just love Raymond Chandler and can’t believe I didn’t read his novels till this year. The High Window has Philip Marlowe working...
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Poem of the Week
The Meeting by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow After so long an absence At last we meet again: Does the meeting give us pleasure, Or does it give us pain? The tree of life has been shaken, And but few of us...
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Diary of a Mad Old Man
Junichiro Tanizaki’s Diary of a Mad Old Man is just what the title says. Well, he’s not completely mad. The main character is an old man obsessed with his daughter in law, a former cabaret singer,...
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Plagues, Witches & Wars: A Good Class
I’ve started a fascinating class in historical fiction, for readers or writers, through Coursera. It’s called Plagues,Witches & Wars: The Worlds of Historical Fiction. It’s free and offered through...
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Another Reading
https://vimeo.com/peopleshistory/kevin-coval-nelson-algren-chicago Here’s another reading of Algren’s poetic Chicago: City on the Make.
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Fr. Laurence, Why?
For my online book club we read Romeo and Juliet, which my students are now reading as well. Once I get to Act 4, I want to just ask Friar Laurence why on earth he thought this plan with Juliet taking...
View ArticleA Kindred Spirit
By serendipity, I just discovered this smart, engaging woman’s vlog on books and writing. Farah lives in the UAE and is articulate, perceptive and oh so knowledgeable about current books. After the...
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American Writers Museum
Timeline This year the American Writers Museum in Chicago on Michigan Avenue. It was high time I visited so despite the rain and cold, I took a friend from Milwaukee to explore it. After showing our...
View ArticleFrom Brothers Karamazov
Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt...
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I Loved You By Alexander Pushkin I loved you, and I probably still do, And for a while the feeling may remain… But let my love no longer trouble you, I do not wish to cause you any pain. I loved you;...
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Word of the Week
bardolatry (n) – excessive admiration of William Shakespeare. Yes, this is a real word!
View ArticleMasterpiece: Les Misérables
It’s no secret that Les Misérables is one of my favorite stories of all time. I’ve read the book and seen the musical, the film with Liam Neeson, the film with Jean Gabin and the one with Harry Barr....
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Adam’s Curse By W.B. Yeats We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it...
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I thought I should go back to the ancients this week. So here’s an ode by Horace: Ode I, 5: To Pyrrha By Horace Translation by John Milton What slender youth, bedew’d with liquid odors, Courts thee on...
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