Michial Farmer leads David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour in a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s six “terrible sonnets.”

General Introduction – Keeping the seat warm – Danny gets it right! – Listener feedback – Christian Humanist University Personal Definitions – Exemplifying American-ness – The changing representation of Huckleberry…

General Introduction – Listener feedback – We talk about Mike Tyson for awhile What Is Postmodernism? – Modernism without the anxiety – Incredulity toward metanarratives – Playfulness and literary production…

General Introduction – A month of decimals – What’s David teaching? John Donne and Death – Does he appeal to the bodily resurrection? – Quippiness, chipperness – Taking death seriously…

General Introduction – Whose campus smells worst? – Nathan pokes another hornet’s nest – A beer for your stomach Etymologies – Marine is boring – Okeanos – Are marines soldiers…

General Introduction – Why we don’t have a Dr. Who episode – The Facebook page So What Is Realism? – The Oxford Guide weighs in – Realism vs. unbelievability –…

Why Read Moby-Dick? By Nathaniel Philbrick. 144 pp. Viking Adult. $25. If such a thing as the Great American Novel exists, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is almost certainly the finest example…

General Introduction – What is a triptych, anyway? – We stand outside of time – What’s on the blog? Euripides the Man – What do we know? – Making fun…

He must have regretted it for the rest of his life, but J.D. Salinger perfectly encapsulated the deep affection a reader develops for an author. “What really knocks me out,”…

BLOOPBLEEPBLURGH General Introduction – What’s on the blog? – The feud continues – Polymathery Cybernetics as Governance – Not a portmanteau! – Getting organized as a spiritual gift – Rudder-steerer…

General Introduction – Do suits make you smarter? – Pardon Michial’s head cold – A plug for the CWC The History of the King James Version – And the Bibles…

How Moby-Dick prefigures Nietzsche. Alasdair Macintyre criticizes Research-I universities for not really being universities. Jay Bennet, Super-Calvinist, says, “Get the Christ out of Christmas!” A Message from your University President…

General Introduction – Hey, there’s four of us! – A needless interruption – What’s on the blog? – David pleases the king Background – A little-read Great Book – Spenser’s…

Something about nineteenth-century America made great novelists shoot for immense public success by eliminating what it was about their writing that made them great. The most obvious and egregious example…

Our theme music this week is Ted Leo’s “The Sons of Cain,” from 2007’s Living with the Living. Does it remind anyone else of Hey Dude for some reason? General…