…  The enduring story of the Witches of Eastwick and their horny little Devil . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Updike himself admitted that the book,...

…  Washington’s Spies (2006 review) .

…  Beyond the Lines: Frost's "Fire and Ice" . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) The poem encompasses the universe and the forces behind th...

A thought should not expand symmetrically like a formula, but disorderly like a shrub. — Don Colacho

…  Terpsichorean | Word Genius .

… Remembering Jim Quinn, Chronicler of Philadelphia’s Restaurant Renaissance . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Travels in the Library: Veterans Day motivates my bucket-list for reading .

…  Philosopher Revealed as Serial Plagiarist (updated) - Daily Nous . I hope people are noticing that our colleges and universities increasi...

…  Maverick Philosopher: In the Absence of Knowledge, May one Believe? Critique of Bryan Magee . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I happen not to think...

…  Dante’s Divine Comedy. The boxset .

…  Into the netherworld of London’s worst neighborhoods .

… It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky , born on this date in 1881

…  Irenic | Word Genius .

…  Travels in the Library: Charles Dickens on the Redneck Riviera .

… Serial murder in Henry VIII’s not-so-merry-old England .

…  Is the Netflix Documentary a Paean to Catholic Convert and Daily Communicant Marshall McLuhan? - The Daily Eudemon . (Hat tip, Dave Lull....

…  It's Not Over - The Catholic Thing . Laws and procedures exist for the good reason that they are, at times, indispensable.  Now seems...

It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamor raised by heated partisans. — Friedrich Schiller , born on this dat...

…  Terraqueous | Word Genius .

…  Archie Leach’s Greatest Character . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Part of the fascination that Grant exerted on moviegoers lay in the fact that h...

…  Arthur Conan Doyle — few writers have left as full a record of their lives and literary works .

…  Oscar Levant and Oscar Wilde: Masters of Staving Off Melancholy with Wit | Literary Hub . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I'm old enough to hav...

The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is...

…  Poem: Landing Here - The New York Times . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

…  Naomi Long Madgett poem Alabama Centennial . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.) Naomi Long Madgett passed away on Nov. 4 at age 97.

…  Opuscule | Word Genius .

…  Poem of the Year: May 2019-Apr 2020 : IBPC . … The Judge’s Page .

 ...But certainly poignant  -- England's "Thankful Villages" 

…  Puerperal | Word Genius .

…  “...the most genuine novelist we have had in literature.”

…  Siris: R. Jonathan Sacks . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… ‘Don’t read Clockwork Orange – it’s a foul farrago,’ wrote Burgess . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Andrew Biswell, Burgess’s biographer and the fo...

A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy. — Rumer Godden , who died on this date in 1998

…  Travels in the Library: Maigret is thrown back into a world he had left behin d .

…  A Historian Explains Perhaps the Biggest Lesson of the 20th Century - Foundation for Economic Education . Johnson’s perspective is often ...

…  Smokin' Joe Frazier Among 22 Dead People Who Still Vote In Philly | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog .

…  First Known When Lost: Leaves . Just a few weeks ago, when the day was windy the trees still made the sound of the sea, green billows and...

 …  UW ‘surprised’ to find that most students aren’t racist . What a problem it must be these days to find even  half-decent college or univ...

…  First Known When Lost: Elections . Yes, it all becomes quite tiresome.  Best to let it go.  The soul's home is in other places.

…   Paul Davis On Crime: Watching John Ford's Film About Ole Small-Town Politics, 'The Sun Shines Bright,' As One Waits For The ...

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind. — Albert Camus , born on this date in 1913

…  Heaven on Middle-earth: New editions of cult favourites —  Borneo Bulletin Online .  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  The Well-Tempered Neurologist . …  during a neurology fellowship in movement disorders, Pantelyat witnessed a more intriguing effect musi...

…  A comedian has just solved "the world's most difficult literary puzzle." | Literary Hub . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Well, this ...

…  Juvenilia | Word Genius .

The Magnificent Ambersons  -- Booth Tarkington's portrait of the American midwest at the turn of the twentieth century -- is just that: ...

… Travels in the Library: A general, a jaguar, and plenty of problems on the border .

…  What We Abandon in Memoir | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog .

…  Looking for a spooky read? Here are Catholic horror books to keep you up at night. | America Magazine . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I just orde...

…  Reflections on the Translation of Poetry > Samuel Hux . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) …  my easy-to-say (but hard-to-exemplify) Poetry Transla...

  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Edify | Word Genius .

The religious life begins when we discover that God is not a postulate of ethics, but the only adventure in which it is worth the trouble t...

…  Kathryn Hughes - Hooked on a Feline | Literary Review | Issue 491 . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Gee, I loved my cat Pandora (she’s buried in ou...

…  Crime beat - Philadelphia Weekly .   Stories and images of looters in Philadelphia running out of stores with boxes of sneakers, electron...

…  Photography as an Art > Theodore Dalrymple . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)  I was drawn recently to the question of whether photography was tr...

…  America’s past as metaphor for today and tomorrow . 'It's a disjointed world, Liberty. No snug fit to the parts anymore. We are ...

…  Mariana Yampolsky: photographer, expat pioneer of road-tripping in Mexico . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.) While we might not think of ourselves ...

…  Incredible Winners of 2020 Siena International Photography Awards . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

…  Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox | Poetry Foundation . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.) Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born on this date in 1850.

…  How Did the Months Get Their Names? | Word Genius .

…  Quotidian | Word Genius .

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority. — Will Durant , born on this date in 1885

… what more could you want? Travels in the Library: So much more than a formulaic Gothic ghost story .

…  Miscellaneous Musings: The most destructive demagogue in America .

… The Fall of a Sparrow by Ann Pasternak Slater, review — in defence of TS Eliot’s maligned wife, Vivien . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) This book i...

… NO THINKING . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) It is the fundamental unity between James the well-known writer of what we now call “horror” fiction a...

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is ...

… Jack Dorsey Hires Homeless Man Off Streets Of San Francisco To Fill In For Him At Hearings | The Babylon Bee .

…  John Leo: A Journalist's Call to Accountability —Maureen Mullarkey . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) In July the Spectator.US ran a polished re...

…  Column: What Mark Twain said in the Buffalo Express about running for governor | Columnists | buffalonews.com .   (Hat tip, Tim Davis.) “...

…  THE BRITISH INTELLIGENCE BOOK CLUB IVY-COMPTON-BURNETT AN INTRODUCTION . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) No one, I think, would describe reading Iv...

…  Crime, Politics, and History: An Election Day 2020 Reader | CrimeReads . (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)

…  Centenary | Word Genius .

…  Rachel Hadas: Do You Believe in Ghosts? | Vox Populi . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Miscellaneous Musings: Revisiting Transcendentalism (and American history) .

…  Unquiet Adulthood: On John Updike's Rabbit, Run | Book Marks . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) The book was published 60 years ago today. This ...

 …  What Are the Chances? By Robert Scotellaro . …  I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood By Tiana Clark . …  Radical Wordsworth: T...

Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the tru...

…  Andragogy | Word Genius .

…  The shame of the press | Media Myth Alert . Matt Taibbi, who is perhaps the most searching critic these days of contemporary American med...

… Miscellaneous Musings: Revisiting American Bloomsbury . In a period of about twenty-five years in the middle of the nineteenth century, th...

…  Sean Connery showed us the way things ought to be done . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  CDC says cruises are allowed to set sail again ... but passengers are not allowed on board | Not the Bee .

…  Weimar America's Journalistic Elites | The American Conservative . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) It is time — it is  past time  — for the non...

…   American Weimar or American Hapsburg? | Spectator USA . The bureaucracy in Washington DC — our Vienna, only without the boulevards, salo...

Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, en...

 … Why should The Strand survive? As it happened, on my last trip The Strand had none of the books I was looking for. I wasn’t searching for...

…  Maverick Philosopher: Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer?  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I, too, am a Kerouac fan, and think it best in the case to l...

…  NYU and Department of Education reach settlement over anti-Semitism complaint .

…  All the Famous Writers Who Have Reportedly Come Back as Ghosts | CrimeReads . (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)

…   Zealotry of Guerin: Fog Run II (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #536 . Lovely photo. It reminds of times when I would walk through the woods to gr...

…  Sean Connery dies aged 90 | The Independent .

If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all. — John Keats , born on this date in 1795

…  Grimoire | Word Genius .

    (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)   Drummer Viola Smith died on October 21 at age 107.

… Meet Larry Krasner, the Rogue Prosecutor Wreaking Havoc in Philadelphia . Krasner was sworn in in January 2018. In 2018, there were 351 mu...

…  An Exercise in Love by Diane di Prima | Poetry Foundation . (Hat tip, Rus Bowden. Diane di Prima died on October 25 at 86.

…  Moiety | Word Genius .

An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels it votaries to take that line and you can see their mi...