Clemson

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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

I’ve Said Too Much

There’s a danger of saying too much. There’s always that. I wrote previously and succinctly about stories. Here’s a longer exploration I’ve been working on, off and on, for about a year. * Every true story starts with realizing something is out of place and involves people asking who they are in a world where things (they now see)

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Business Card

  Live lean. Altar ends. Mercy burns. Pleasantly surprising. Love to the point of folly. Afflictions eclipsed by glory. Write until your fingers break. Everything worth doing hurts like hell. The individual will be thoroughly misunderstood. Write as if you were dying … — that is, after all, the case. Completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in

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Chiclet Chick Lit

In virtue of two females in the house reading it I have discovered a new (to me) genre and given it a new (to all) name, which title appears as the title of this post. Hermione is patron saint of females pre-sexual still satiated when tittering gleefully over Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson, with New

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The Simple Art of Murder (Excerpt)

Raymond Chandler In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not

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