http://landmarkinn.com/?plugin=calpress-event-calendar I think it is entirely to Cheryl Strayed’s credit as a writer and as a human being that she can write a book which one reviewer – admittedly, not a very observant one – can reduce to the question “What do you have to say now, God?” while I find it religious in outlook and […]
Category Archives: Essays on Literature
Cheryl Strayed’s Initiation.
30-Jan-15Nangwa We all know that something happened to the collective soul of the West during “the Great War”: that somehow or other before the War civilized people were busy making panelled billiard-rooms, velvet dresses, and gilded opera houses; and afterwards they were throwing themselves with humanity-destroying panic into Money or Ideologies, looking to Communism or Eugenics […]
Looking over John McPhee’s masterful essay Atchafalaya – which if you’ve never read you should just go and do – I am struck by the improvements made by our computers’ optical-recognition software. Presumably the New Yorker will fix this at some point, so we must enjoy these nuggets while we can: Very early in the […]
John Muir.
30-Apr-14Crossing the Cumberlands: Awoke drenched with mountain-mist, which made a grand show, as it moved away before the hot sun. Passed Montgomery, a shabby village at the head of the east slope of the Cumberland Mountains. Obtained breakfast in a clean house and began the descent of the mountains. Obtained fine views of a wide, […]
Francis Parkman.
02-Apr-14I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi – which is superb – and I have been amazed by the sparkling little gems of prose which Twain culled from Parkman. I provide a sample, La Salle’s entering the Gulf of Mexico: And now they neared their journey’s end. On the 6th of April, the […]
T.E. Lawrence and His Editors.
05-Feb-14There was something truly strange and self-defeating and remarkable about T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame). Like many artists his relation to fame seems to have resembled his relationship to himself: he hated it, despised it, and was also fascinated by it and could not quite give up his quest to possess it on some kind […]
Certain things in life surprise me, though I suppose they shouldn’t. Two days ago I visited a large New York City Barnes and Noble – one of those multiple-level bookshops where thousands upon thousands of titles are on the shelves – and I asked if they had any Wendell Berry books. Berry has written more […]
Clive James, Cultural Amnesia.
28-Aug-13Several years ago one of my college professors asked me if I was reading Clive James. (The implication was that I should be.) I told him I had never heard of him. He was shocked: James was a regular contributor to those learned periodicals that a certain class of people consider obligatory reading for intelligent […]
Freud and the Future of an Illusion.
19-Aug-13A friend recently lent me a copy of Clive James’ book Cultural Amnesia – now that is a good friend – which I devoured over the course of a little over a week. The book is excellent, and what is particularly lovely about it is that it filled me with the desire to read everything […]
Apologia Pro Carolo Gustavo Jung.
08-Jan-13There are some rules in the intellectual world which are pretty reliable for detecting bloviating stupidity, or blathering solipsism (or however you want to render b.s.), and one of them is this: if someone launches a five-thousand word attack on a noted author, and almost never quotes a line from the voluminous works of that […]