In which I explain why I’d like to be the first biographer of Bob Dylan.
(I also posted this to BlueSky because I want to see how long it will be before someone responds, “Actually, there are already several biographies of Bob Dylan.”)
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Gary Saul Morson and Julio M. Ottino:
Artificial intelligence can process vast datasets, identify patterns invisible to human perception, and generate explanations with remarkable coherence. Faced with such capabilities, it is tempting to believe that uncertainty can finall...
From Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer:
Shortly before the American Revolution … the Anglican Society for the Propagation of Gospel sent missionaries to Massachusetts for the conversion of the “heathen.” They built one of their missions not on the frontier but across the street from Harvard College and labored to convert the sons of Congregational New England. The head of this Anglican organization, Bishop Thomas Seeker, made no secret of his contempt for the colonists, whom he collectively characterized in 1741 as “wicked, and dissolute and brutal in every respect.”
An excellent idea whose time has come again.
Edward Mendelson:
Oxford reprinted the anthology in hard covers until the mid-1960s, then issued it in paperback in 1973, a few weeks before Auden's death, under the title W.H. Auden's Oxford Book of Light Verse, as if to signal that it was more of a personal selectio...
Currently reading: Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer 📚
I keep seeing these petulant-to-angry stories in the London sports pages about how vast North America is and how hot — as though ICE had expanded the continent and heated it up to make Europeans uncomfortable. Sorry, but it’s always been this way. North America is more than twice the size of Europe (excluding Russia) and most of it is further south: London’s latitude = that of Calgary, Alberta; Madrid = Chicago; Kansas City = Rome. Miami is at the same latitude as Luxor, Egypt and Dubai. And Calgary, Chicago, and Kansas City are in the midst of an enormous continent with no ocean to moderate temperatures. This is reality.
Incidentally: Waco, where I live, is at the same latitude as Jerusalem. The Lord knoweth His own.
Over at Cosmos Malick, a post on the autobiographical elements in some of Malick’s films.
Francis Young:
I have been interested in Faustina Kowalska’s experiences ever since I first read about them when I was eighteen. I am not usually much of a fan of modern-day (or even early modern) devotions, and I was never sure what to make of things like Lourdes, Fatima, ...
It might seem surprising, in a world of global stars, that the 6m Danes, many of whom are fluent in English, listen mainly to homegrown music. And until fairly recently they did not. In 2019 only five songs in Denmark’s top 20 were in Danish. By last year the figure was 18.
A similar trend is under way in other countries — and in other forms of entertainment. From Asia to the Americas, music charts are increasingly dominated by local sounds. Hollywood television-streaming companies are commissioning more local productions in foreign markets, causing consumption of American shows to fall. Social networks are connecting the whole world, but so far people are mainly using them to consume local content. And as video gaming expands, it too is becoming increasingly tailored to local cultures.
Marcin Wichary is right: Apple keeps talking about making things faster, but users just want things to work reliably.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born in Oxford on this date in 1893. The cover of my forthcoming biography of her might look like this:
I’m spending the day on a long-overdue task: going through all my unfinished drafts and deciding what to do with them, the three options being (a) post as-is to the Big Blog, (b) post as-is here, (c) discard. It’s dreary work but I’ll have a more orderly digital workplace when I’m done. And over the next few days more posts than usual will be showing up — I don’t want to put them in a queue because if I do I’ll be tempted to work further on them before they post.
When I was a kid, my dad often bought these Ace Doubles, and they seemed magical to me. Read a book, flip it over, read another book. But I also often think of a comment made by the editor Terry Carr: If Ace were to publish the Bible they’d do it as a Double: on one side War God of Israel, on the other The Thing with Three Souls.
I love watching our male cardinals fetch seeds and suet from our feeder and bring them to their lady friends, who wait patiently and decorously. Such chivalrous young men; such appreciative young women.
The british architect Norman Foster once called the [Boeing] 747 his favorite building of the 20th century. Like the ocean liners and railcars it replaced, the 747 is more than a vehicle. It is also a dwelling.…
Use of the whole space was encouraged. Why make a building for people to remain seated in? A TWA pamphlet about 747 service from the early 1970s encouraged passengers to exercise on their flight: “Walk 13 times up and down the cabin and you’ve actually covered one mile.” Continental once boasted of removing 41 seats for four extra inches of legroom in coach. Even on a three-hour domestic flight, the experience of the airborne building was deemed as important as the transportation itself.
The photos in this article are wonderful.
Here’s an essay by me on Auden and James Schuyler. And here are links to some of the poems I mention:
- Schulyer, “A Stone Knife”
- Lawrence, “Snake”
- Auden, “Their Lonely Betters”
- Lawrence, “Tortoise Family Connections”
My book The Year of Our Lord 1943 has gotten a largely positive response, but there’s been one odd element to its reception that can be seen here: Some people complain that a book that’s quite explicitly about what five Christian intellectuals wrote during World War II is marred by its failure to cite works published in 1930 or 1955. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To put the point very mildly indeed, I am not a fan of Gov. Greg Abbott, but this letter is encouraging. It’s clear that the big AI companies think that minimally regulatory states like Texas, and all of rural America, are easy targets for predation and extraction. If their business model requires them to exploit us rather than deal fairly with us, then the sooner they fail the better.
Brian Phillips:
Of course, what seems true before a World Cup has a way of getting blown to dust by about the second day of matches. But the 2026 tournament, cohosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada — though don’t mention the cohosting part to Donald Trump — ...
There are only two conspiracy theories I truly, madly, deeply believe in: that LBJ had JFK killed, and that Gram Parsons wrote “Wild Horses.”
Good haul from Vintage Mio today.
Finished reading: Don’t Call It Art 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again by Austin Kleon. Just a terrific book, I think Austin’s best — and exactly what I need right now as I contemplate a big change in my life a year down the road. This will be my guidebook, or rather my anti-guidebook, since if there’s one lesson everyone should learn from this book it’s how sad it is to know where you’re going. 📚
Jeong Seon (1676-1759), Clearing after rain on Mount Inwang. Ink on paper, Joseon dynasty, 1751.
A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan is a very good biography, but it (inadvertently I think) raises an interesting question. Late in life Schuyler (a) achieved stability of mind and daily life and (b) became a regular churchgoer. The unasked question is whether those two developments were related, and if so, how? 📚
So strange that the Sagrada Familia is nearing completion — unfinishedness seems so integral to its identity. Much larger version of the photo here.