Thinking in Song
At FPR, Gregory Butler has written a nice discussion of Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising. This album has been one to which I’ve returned with time, and my opinion of it has grown, slowly but...
Author: J.L. Wall
A man there was in the Land of Uz
Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, closes with a flip-book sequence of one of the falling men from the World Trade Center. The order of the images are reversed, so...
Don Draper Studies I: Shoring Fragments Against Ruins
(This post talks about all of Season 4 of Mad Men. Read at your own risk, but, I mean, it’s on DVD already, so go ahead and help out Netflix and the Postal Service.) Over...
David Brooks, Expertise, and the Fetishization of Happiness
People have been giving attention to David Brooks’ latest column. This is good, because I have a soft spot for the incorporation of Yiddish into daily life, particularly the word “bagel,” and especially on...
The Polis in Post-Modernity III: Constitutions Written and Oral, Living and Dead
(Note: This post began as a comment to Tim’s post this morning, grew into a full-fledged response, then developed into a sort of continuation of this series. But elements of all three are mingled....
Presidential Fictions
Perhaps the strangest reaction to President Obama’s summer-reading list came from Mickey Kaus (emphasis his): Obama’s just-released “summer reading list” doesn’t offer a lot of evidence even for the “reads very widely” thesis. It’s...
Poking My Head Up From Behind the Box-Fort
I know that this is not a problem limited to Commentary, or to today’s right-of-center magazines, but since Commentary is the establishment-conservative publication I read most regularly, it gets the blame. The best part about writing this...
Crucifixion and Archaeology
A detailed discussion of one of the few victims of crucifixion to be discovered, here. Less on the gore and pain of how the death-torture physically worked than trying to glean historical facts and possibilities...
The Polis in Post-Modernity (II): Scale and the City
In a comment to my previous post, Art Deco offers several statistics in support of his counter-argument that “Mobility is not so novel.” He is right—and especially, I would say, in America. Huck Finn sets...
The Polis in Post-Modernity (I): Migration and New Media
In the summer issue of National Affairs, Marc Dunkelman offers a diagnosis of the American polity via America’s communities: Over the past few decades, technological, social, cultural, and economic changes have revolutionized the structure...
(Civil) War and Tragedy, Cont’d
Tossed off almost like an aside, and one of those lines I had to go back and listen to multiple times while somewhere on I-65 in the northern half of Indiana, Eric Foner speculates...
“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Silver Dagger
(I’m writing about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping. But really, you should listen to the music more than you should pay attention to me.) More commented on in reviews than the...
Quote for the Week
In a pine grove on the southwest cusp of the interstate cloverleaf 5 P.M. / JULY 4 Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted...
A Quick Question
Since I’m beginning the hunt for a new laptop: Does anyone have experience with/opinions about non-Word word processors? I view a laptop pretty much as a glorified typewriter, and if I’m going to have...
The Tragedy of War is the Tragedy of Men
Ta-Nehisi Coates continues to wonder about the relationships between and among war, tragedy, and justice: There’s a hazy line between my posts arguing that the Civil War wasn’t tragic, and my posts on the 30 Years War. The key dilemma I’m...
Department of Meaningless Historical Analogies: Civil War Edition (or, Racists Galore!)
Because I find less wrong with supporting John McCain in 2008 than seceding in order to protect the peculiar institution, I think that Andrew Sullivan’s statement Recall that the map of the 2008 presidential...
“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Weep No More My Lady
(I’m writing about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping. But really, you should listen to the music more than you should pay attention to me.) Bob Dylan isn’t the only thematic influence...
“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Dylan in the Doorway Cryin’
(I’m going to take a page out of William Brafford’s book and write about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping. But really, you should listen to the music...
“The Kids Are All Right” and the Obligation of “Third-Party Parents”
Because I’m at least a year behind when it comes to movies, I did not watch Harry Potter this weekend. I’ll probably wait until this time next year, when the crowds have died down...
Life Imitating Fiction Watch
Given that Aaron Sorkin successfully predicted the major party candidates in 2008, Rahm Emanuel’s rise to Chief of Staff, the negation of an electoral rival by making them Secretary of State, presidential nicotine habits,...
