Alan posts these little gems on cinema like an afterthought, but I continue to harbor the hope that in retirement he’ll finally give us the full book on film that has so long been brewing in his mind, journals, and blogs.
Alan posts these little gems on cinema like an afterthought, but I continue to harbor the hope that in retirement he’ll finally give us the full book on film that has so long been brewing in his mind, journals, and blogs.
“The will of God” is one of the ruffles political leaders baste onto their rhetorical garments whenever it can be made seemly to do so.
—Elizabeth Hardwick, “Piety and Politics” (1976)
Read Alan on the repaganization of fantasy, then read my essay from 2024 on a similar theme: namely, why pagan fantasy is possible, but not post-Christian fantasy—i.e. fantasy that sets out to be anti-Christian, anti-theist, or anti-theodicy.
“5 Reasons Why Supergirl Flopped At The Box Office." Sometimes it’s not complicated. No one liked it, and the trailers couldn’t hide how bad it was. No mysteries here.
The latest issue of The Lamp is excellent, as always, but I especially enjoyed reading Caldwell on Tennyson (wait for the kicker), Green on Bloom, Hitchens on Weimar, and Dan Moore on Arthur Pendennis (aka Thackeray).
I thought Ann Manov’s essay “Republican Machines” (great title, given the source and subject) for Harper’s was a fair and thoughtful treatment of the rise of civic centers on university campuses around the country.
I’ve got not one but two new pieces in Christianity Today: a review of Luke Burgis’s new book and a review of Walter Brueggemann’s final book.
I was reminded this week that I not only have a Goodreads profile but that, between ten and fifteen years ago, I wrote a number of reviews for books I was reading at the time. It turns out I’m officially old enough to have forgotten things I’ve published on the internet that continue to be read and taken seriously by others—in this case, I got an email from someone who bought and read a book I reviewed, a review I had no idea I’d ever written.
I loved this update from Alan on Cosmos Malick. I just love what he’s doing there. And I hope-hope-hope he turns it into a book, even though he thinks that’s impossible (at present).
I only just learned about the Critical Star Trek Studies Substack, and I loved these two pieces by Adam Roberts and Adam Kotsko.
The Old Testament talks about this vengeful God. The New Testament talks about the love of God. The only thing said about God in the New Testament is that God is love, nothing else.
This is in a public conversation with Marilynne Robinson. I wish I could hear the audio. I simply do not know what Fosse could mean by this, but perhaps it was meant to be ironic, and the tone would show that.
I have a running friendly argument with a buddy about why (a) I don’t watch YouTube videos/influencers of any kind and (b) why I am not and never will be, or try to be, a YouTuber-influencer.
Happily, Alan Jacobs has succinctly stated my case for me. QED.
I liked Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun a bit more than Adam Roberts did, but his criticisms are basically all on point.
I like this kind of harmonizing fun. I think the case is even more compelling if (a) the beloved disciple is not the son of Zebedee but a Jerusalem-based elite also named John and (b) James and his siblings are children of Joseph’s prior marriage before Mary. They are therefore Joseph’s biological children and Jesus’s true siblings, but via adoption not birth from the same mother. This would also explain the lack of a need to explain any of this on the part of the Evangelists: If all of Jesus’s brothers and sisters are older than him, and he is Mary’s firstborn son, then it follows that they are quite literally and legally his siblings, even as he is the one and only son of his mother, the Aeiparthenos.
This is one of the best things Matt Anderson has ever written: on tattoos, facelifts, and getting beyond “sinfulness” in Christian (lay and pastoral) moral deliberation.
…our low regard for nostalgia often seems not to rest on some substantive standard of excellence, in light of which a preference for the past is seen as missing the mark, but rather expresses idolatry of the present. This kind of “forward-thinking” is at bottom an apologetic species of conservatism, as it defers to and celebrates whatever is currently ascendant.
—Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (2015), 222
As he explained in previous announcements, “Ray Gunn” has been percolating in the director’s mind for more than 30 years. Sitting in a Hollywood vault for several decades, Bird finally got hold of the project again a few years back.
That sure is a long time for Brad Bird to be sitting alone in a Hollywood vault.
On this week’s episode of Mere Fidelity—my return after a five or six week absence—Derek and I had Brad Littlejohn on as a guest to talk with us about Pope Leo’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.
Presumably paywalled for non-subscribers—all the more reason to subscribe today!—but I’m honored to have an essay in the newest issue of The New Atlantis titled “You Don’t Have to Use AI."
For Father’s Day I wrote about my fathers in the faith, i.e., faithful men in my congregation who helped hand on the faith to me.
Some Australians would die before they said Mate,
though hand-rolled Mate is a high-class disguise—
but to have just one culture is well out of date:
it makes you Exotic, i.e. there to penetrate
or to ingest, depending on size.
—Les Murray, “A Brief History” (1996; this is the third of six stanzas)
These viewership numbers for the NBA Finals are pretty wild. My thought all season, whether listening to Simmons on tanking or reading Freddie on style, is that while their criticisms may be on point, the league is actually as good as it’s ever been, maybe even better than ever. Glad to see people tuned in! I’ve had more conversations with casual sports and basketball fans in the last month than I have since Steph and LeBron were battling a decade ago.
Rilke, 1908: Du mußt dein Leben ändern.
Wittgenstein, 1937: Daß das Leben problematisch ist, heißst, daß Dein Leben nicht in die Form des Lebens paßt. Du mußt dann Dein Leben verändern, und paßt es in die Form, dann verschwindet das Problematische.