We live by our opinions. While other people’s opinions are called illusions, if they pose no threat to our interests, and prejudices if they do, we call our own opinions “truth” or fundamental principles, if we are fools; if we are more cautious we prefer to speak of theories and hypotheses
Many years ago, to test the gullibility of colleagues and readers, I started the rumor that I was being considered as a possible Presidential candidate. No one I know could be that gullible? Think again, one prominent libertarian-leaning conservative called to find out if it was true. Obviously, he was sounding me out for a cabinet appointment. A few years later, I printed a piece, which I explicitly attributed to a dream, in which I was being dragged to the Hague to be put on trial for complicity in Slobodan Milosevic’s genocidal policies in Kosovo. Again, who would believe it?...
If Donald Trump is doomed to endure a second ordeal of impeachment proceedings, what are we to expect?
Part two in the podcast series in which Dr. Fleming, with Rex Scott and Jim Easton, grapple with the literal meaning of every word in the prayer we are given as the model by Jesus Christ.
As I explained in a comment, Curtin was a famous folklorist and historian of the Mongols, whose death was lamented by Teddy Roosevelt. He can be long-winded and takes for granted a breadth of reading which not everyone possesses. Nonetheless, his introduction is very useful.
Jessica Powers was born less than three hours from our house, in Mauston, Wisconsin, in 1905. In 1941 she entered a Carmelite convent in Pewaukee, where she received the name Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit.
What is most astonishing in Garrett’s narrative technique is his generosity to the narrators. While most novelists write from a single point of view, whether their own or that of a fictional character or of liberal philosophy’s impartial spectator, Garrett allows his people to speak for themselves and to justify their (often miserable and sometimes worthless) lives.
This was published originally (if I recall correctly) in an issue of The Texas Review. George Garret, knowing how highly my wife and I regarded The Succession, asked me to write the piece, perhaps because he had trouble finding anyone else.
It’s time to move on to another book discussion. Here are some possibilities.
Aeschylus, The Seven Against Thebes.
Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, which deals with household and family management.
Several of Tennyson’s Arthurian Idyls….
This podcast initiates a series in which Dr. Fleming, with Rex Scott and Jim Easton, grapple with the literal meaning of every word in the prayer we are given as the model by Jesus Christ. This first podcast introduces the topic and sketches out the methods we shall be using.
