Today, February 24, is the birthday of many people, obviously.* I have selected four whom I find especially interesting for personal reasons. Strangely, however, I see an order among them:…

I’ve always been a sucker for a good monster story. As a boy, I would browse through my parents’ books, especially the encyclopedias, and stop whenever I saw an illustration…

On the Road slid into the American canon like a little boy under a garage door, running on pure energy and speed and getting there without anyone really thinking about…

This week’s music: The Wallflowers’ “6th Avenue Heartache,” from Bringing Down the Horse (1996). General Introduction – Stamps, pogs, and other collections – What’s on the blog this week? –…

Today, February 16th, is the feast of St. Juliana in the Latin tradition. While the earliest lists of martyrs link her with Cumae (through birth), she is also associated with…

I’ve been accused of being “anti-science” on the podcast, a charge against which I’ve done my best to defend myself. My suspicion, as I say in that second post, is…

The tales of King Arthur have fascinated me ever since I first read them, years ago, in a volume of Reader’s Digest condensed books. One section of those stories that…

This week’s music: “Her Right Hand Rules the World,” by They Sang As They Slew, from Get Well (Northern Records, 2004). Great band, great record, great Tolkien reference. General Introduction…

Crévecoeur and the Two Faces of America The back of the Penguin edition of J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer says “History” on it, and…

For anyone who’s interested, I have an article (“William Faulkner’s Failed Augustine”) in the current issue of The Explicator (January-March 2010). Here’s the webpage. But if you want to read…

Today, the third of February, is feast day of St. Laurence (Laurentius) of Canterbury.  He was an early figure of the branch of Christendom we might style “Germanic”: St. Laurence,…

General Introduction – An apology for Nathan Gilmour’s absence – A plug for our website – A eulogy for J.D. Salinger What Is Comedy? – Comedy in a cosmic sense…

If you keep up with the book blogosphere at all, you’ve no doubt already stumbled across this piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education, a brutal takedown of Ralph Waldo…

As the podcast’s lone Americanist, I suppose it falls to me to say something about J.D. Salinger, who died today at 91. Salinger is best known, of course, for The…