However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. — Ecclesiastes 11:8 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. — John 1:5 I wake up mornings in […]
Another Week Ends: Tribal Morality, Passports to Eden, Reflektor, Spufford in the Times, Social Wiring, Hemingway's Granddaughter, Anxious Simpsons, and Heisenberg on Ice
1. Next week, Harvard psychologist Joshua Greene is slated to release a new book on behavioral morality, examining the everyday irrationalities and subconscious biases that Kahneman, Tversky and company have popularized over the last few decades (aside: are all titles/covers copying Malcolm Gladwell?). A common behavioral problem, the “trolley experiment”, asks people to make a hypothetical […]
Another Week Ends: Geistless Zeit, Tony Soprano vs. Walter White, Coach Taylor as Gentleman, Netflix's PRISM, Marriage Apps, Hemingway, and Christianity as Marketing Label
1. To start off, Henry Allen over at The Wall Street Journal describes a contemporary cultural inertia he’s felt. An ironically self-described ex-“Ziggy Zeitgeist”, he’s now in limbo, the cultural doldrums, ht VH: Now I am disquieted. It’s not that I see things changing for better or worse, for richer or poorer, or even not changing at […]
Short Story Wednesdays: "Big Two-Hearted River" by Hemingway
This week we turn to Ernest Hemingway’s classic, beloved “Big Two-Hearted River”, a story about fishing in backcountry Michigan. Its stylistic technique is the best of any stories we’ve looked at (or probably will!) in this understated story about survival. Read along here. This story concludes Hemingway’s In Our Time, a beautiful collection of short stories that […]
No Man (Woman, Child) Is An Island...
If you’ve seen Hemingway and Gellhorn, HBO’s most recent throw-as-much-money-as-you-can-at-it-and-see-what-happens attempt at a small screen blockbuster, I have no doubt you feel strongly about the movie. Unfortunately for HBO, the majority feel strongly that the movie stinks. I’m a lifelong and devoted Hemingway fan. I’ve always been fascinated with (read “envied”) his larger than life persona…not […]
Ernest Hemingway and the Failure of Art
From Paul Johnson’s amusing and enlightening book Intellectuals, a lengthy summation of the tragic façade that was the life of Ernest Hemingway: “Why did Hemingway long for death? It is by no means unusual among writers. His contemporary Evelyn Waugh, a writer in English of comparable stature during this period, likewise longer for death. But […]
Hopelessly Devoted: Psalm Forty Two Verse Five
Our series of Monday devotions continues this morning with one from Paul Walker, Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA and speaker at the upcoming Birmingham conference. This particular reflection aptly addresses the affliction of scorekeeping, and the message of grace that responds in your defense: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, […]
Another Week Ends: Death Row Forgiveness, Sheen on Addiction, Hemingway's Paranoia, Risky Professions, Nick Lowe, Tami Taylor & Werner's Where's Waldo
1. A supremely powerful story about the forgiveness of one’s enemies over on CNN. It concerns Mark Anthony Stroman, a white supremacist on death row in Texas for a slew of hate crimes, including murder, that he committed just after 9/11. One of the men that he shot during his spree, a Muslim named Rais […]
