Recent
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
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
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
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;
Random
Lapsed Pray-er
When I pray in the morning I often lapse into The Jesus Prayer. The link notes the Eastern Orthodox connection and its basic form — Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. — though it seems actually to come in different shapes and colors, some slightly longer and more formal,
Being That Guy
Once after one of my MFA professors had said the work we were reading was neither good nor original, the student who’d produced the pages wailed, But … but this actually happened! So what? He said. * I think François Truffaut said everyone in fiction is crazy, and the problem is to render this craziness
Duo
… More then says because he’s in prison and only has a coal with which to write he can’t respond fully to the view that one ought harm an evil man lest he cause even greater harm to such as are innocent and good. But He counsels us that even if it be our formal office to punish an evil
Barbaric Yawn
One of the saddest things about Mildly Somnolent and Her Raging Nonesuch is she prolly thinks she’s transgressive, mayhap even original. Please. Madonna did it 30 years ago. Figure 15 more for Britney’s turn. Now it’s 15 again. See Ecclesiastes for explanatory of this clockwork snore — What has been is what will be, and