Reviews and News:
Kenneth Rexroth once remarked that the poet Weldon Kees "lived in a permanent and hopeless apocalypse." He committed suicide in 1955 and is rarely studied seriously today. He should be.
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Is film serious art? Yes, says Martin Scorsese.
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No, this isn't the "Age of Trump": "Concerned about the impact of the 'Age of Trump' on science? A wealth of recent literature examining that topic awaits you. Ditto for sex, gay rights, cities, philanthropy, bioethics, foreign policy, fashion, investing, anxiety, faithfulness, the Arctic, and even 'vegan activism.' The list goes on: In the 'Age of Trump,' everything is changing, and bigly. To judge by the avalanche of commentary exploring every aspect of his eponymous 'Age,' our recently inaugurated president is to the United States what Caesar Augustus was to Rome or Louis XIV was to France. Just months in office, he is already putting a profound mark on virtually every aspect of human endeavor."
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Revisiting the forgotten colony of Providence: "Settled a decade after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts and by passengers travelling on its sister ship the Seaflower, it was deemed to have far superior prospects than its chilly and disease-ridden New England forerunner. A more temperate climate was not the only thing in its favour either. Its backers were again devout Puritans, though unlike the 'middling sorts' and lower gentry behind the Massachusetts Bay colony, this scheme was sponsored by grandees: men like Lord Brooke and Lord Saye, whose virulently anti-popish Protestant faith and political ambitions would ultimately lead them and other prominent members of the Providence Island Company to take up arms against the king in the English civil war."
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The beauty and "magisterial power" of Cape Cod.
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Talking with a former Pope: "When asked about a report that his resignation was prompted by a mystical experience (one hears the echo of a story about Aquinas at the end of his life), Benedict retorts baldly: 'That was a misunderstanding.' Repeatedly, when Seewald tries to claim that Ratzinger had been speaking strategically and cleverly to charged issues of the moment in some crucial sermon during his long ministry, the retired man responds with the deflating observation that the resonant phrase or observation simply arose from the biblical text provided in the lectionary reading for that day. And he has the charming ability to make scenes seem magical by the very fact that they are so quotidian. Benedict credits the man who was about to become Pope Francis for his thoughtful kindness in trying to reach out to him personally before the election was announced: 'he wanted to call me by telephone, although unfortunately he did not reach me, as we were watching the television.'"
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Edith Wharton play discovered at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas.
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Alan Furst's world of spies: "Though Furst has been making his living as a writer of spy fiction since the early 1980s, his is not a household name like that of John Le Carré, Ian Fleming, or Tom Clancy. None of Furst's books have made it to the big screen, which is regrettable, since he is a first-rate craftsman of highly cinematic narratives. He is also simply a very good writer, whose sophisticated and richly imagined fiction often evokes Conrad, Graham Greene, and Arthur Koestler. Like those earlier writers, Furst has much to say about history and the human condition."
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Essay of the Day:
Common core initiatives, like Yale's Directed Studies program, were created to challenge the idea that students know what's best for them when it comes to education. They are even more important today, Justin Zaremby argues in The New Criterion:
"At a time when people increasingly receive information through tweets, and express themselves through emoji and Facebook rants, there is something wonderfully subversive about immersing oneself in a great books program. Students in such programs learn that reading requires patience, and debate requires nuance. And their willingness to forestall immersion in the smorgasbord which is the college course catalogue demonstrates maturity and humility. Indeed, in addition to learning how to read and write, students discover that these virtues—patience, nuance, maturity, and humility—are the natural result of a humanistic education.
"The founders of Directed Studies realized the importance of those virtues following the Second World War when they revived the search for coherence in higher education, and their importance has not diminished in a frenetic and uncertain twenty-first century. Such programs do more than train students in useful skills. They provide an opportunity for students to ask difficult questions in the context of a challenging community during their college years and after graduation. Most importantly they help train a new generation of students to believe in the transformative power of humanistic inquiry—personally, locally, nationally, and globally. Students graduate from such programs with more questions than answers, but with the faith that asking these questions is a worthwhile endeavor with the potential to shape their own lives, the lives of those around them, and the lives of men and women whom they may never meet, but whose words they may someday read."
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Photo: Ketchikan
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Poem: George Green, "West Chester Poetry Conference"
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