Buechner

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

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Random

Just Win Baby

If Tim Tebow never plays another down as an NFL Quarterback it won’t be because he can’t. It will be because they say he can’t. I don’t even say “because they think he can’t,” since thinking — actually assessing the data they have in front of them — hasn’t been much involved here. And the bottom line

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Old Flannery Coat

The porch steps were slick with rain this morning, and I realized I knew people whose first reaction to someone slipping on them would not be sadness — let alone to help — but rather to laugh. These are the sociopaths-in-training. These are the men and women I pray get their asses kicked like Al

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Diminishing Me

You’d think a guy’d remember if it was the first time he’d seen a body but I didn’t not at first. [Hadda chance to graduate from college into one of our acceptable wars but didn’t, into the war that is, and no shot at a medical profession: left HS Chem as it had only 28

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Idea: Inspiration

They asked Newton* how he did it and he’s supposed to have said, I thought about it all the time.  * Yes, it’s Archimedes. Keep reading. Inspiration is for amateurs. Chuck Close You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

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