Contributor

Alan Jacobs

Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University. His most recent book is Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind (Penguin, 2020). Before that be published The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2018) and How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (Convergent Books, 2017). He has published fifteen books in all, and in addition to his work for Comment has written for such publications as Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The American Scholar, and many more. After teaching at Wheaton College in Illinois for 29 years, he came to Baylor in 2013.

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The Eye Chart and the King Actor

Mal Evans’s diaryWWhat’s been going on at Ye Olde Blogge? More Babylon Should academics be rewarded for generativity? Wendell Berry one and two A bunch of quotes — head over and see! Eskerrik asko for Euskara: “In retrospect, Franco’s attempt to destroy Euskara helped...

Silence, Minuets, Gold

AA pocket medicine chest, with the Rod of Asclepius on its cover; copied from an original found at Pompeii.I’m still blogging about Babylon, among other things.David Bordwell, in The Way Hollywood Tells It:Far from being a noisy free-for-all, moreover, the industry’s...

Physicists, Poets, and Other Stock Characters

II’ve just returned from a wonderfully restorative week at Laity Lodge, the kind sponsor of this newsletter and my home away from home. My tummy is full of Chef Ryan’s good food and my heart is full of love.An exhibition at the Cloisters: “This exhibition examines the...

I Am Inquisitive in the Lord

WWhat a gorgeous edition of Christopher Smart’s weirdly wonderful poem Jubilate Agno. One of my first published essays — an excerpt from my dissertation — was on Smart, one of the eighteenth century’s most prominent “mad poets.” Samuel Johnson loved Smart, as this...

The Way the Cards Are Dealt

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Presidents, Aunties, and Hexagonal Rooms

W WSJ: “After me, there won’t be any others,” says Roland Reisley, absorbing what it means to be the last original occupant in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Reisley is sitting in his hexagonal living room on a rocky hill near Pleasantville, N.Y. The most famous...

Pray for Rain

TThis site identifies the photographer here as Ilaria Miani, but evidence is lacking. Great Cartier-Bressonesque shot, though, taken at Inle Lake in Myanmar. These fishermen are quite photogenic: see for instance this photo by Rachel Mary Prout. These are the Intha...

Cities and Ruins

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Art Out of Time

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Tiger, Cathedral, Atlas

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En Passant

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The Comfort of Friends

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Tree and Leaf

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Archbishop of Banterbury

Melissa Cormican’s animal portraitsKKieran Healy, responding to the news that Great Britain will have a Free Speech Tsar:As an alternative to ‘Free Speech Tsar’, consider one or more of the following: The Duke of Discourse. Warden of All Chit-Chat. Equerry of...

A Bell That Rings True

Photograph by Tony CearnsWWhen the robot revolution comes, this lady will be in big trouble. I eagerly co-sign my buddy Austin Kleon’s desire to become a professional human loser. Stanley Cavell, writing in 1994 about the Marx Brothers: “I have been aggrieved to hear...

Begone About Your Business

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Scott Joplin

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Sameness and Difference

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Sedentary and Unsedentary Persons

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Heaven Words

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Images and Architectures

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Planless

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Comedy This Morning

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Mudlarkers and Drinking Fountains

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Crocodiles and Thesauri

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The Quality of Mercy

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Ain’t Got Time for the Small Stuff

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Highways of Empire

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Here’s What’s Next

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Christmas Epiphany

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The Winter Storm of Advent

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Picture-boxes in the stars

Bethlehem in Germany,Glitter on the sloping roofs,Breadcrumbs on the windowsills,Candles in the Christmas trees,Hearths with pairs of empty shoes:Panels of NativityOpen paper scenes where doorsOpen into other scenes,Some recounted, some foretold.Blizzard-sprinkled...

Harvest Time

Harold Burdekin, photograph from London Night (1934)AA very different image from London: Piero della Francesca’s Nativity has been restored and is back on view at the National Gallery:What a family learns from caring for a vineyard and its surrounding land for...

Madnesses, Gentle and Otherwise

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The Idea You Have

Bill Myers.LLove to see Frederick Wiseman picking out some Criterion videos. I almost said I want to be that sharp when I’m 92, but I guess I should first hope to make it to 92. I tell myself that when I’m 92 I’m gonna be dropping truth-bombs left and right, but (my...

Welcome to the Working Week

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Truthier Truthiness

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Yo!

The American Kestrel, AKA Sparrowhawk. The English calligrapher Irene Wellington giving thanks for the gift of a turkey: One of the participants in my recent Laity Lodge retreat said that when she remembered the retreat she would think of vampires and donkeys –...

Illuminations and Retreats

More here.AAn illustration by Sam Weber from a Folio Society edition of Frank Herbert’s Dune:See this 2017 story about the Folio Society’s design process.Norbert Wiener, from The Human Use of Human Beings:Messages are themselves a form of pattern and organization....

Long-haulers and Loafers

French signageT The bean man brought his beans to market every weekend – week after week, year after year, decade after decade – until one morning he was found dead at his house. He was 86 and just beginning to talk of retirement. He was, Ann Finkbeiner says, one of...

Patient, Skilled, Peaceful, Goal-Oriented

OOdd monuments of Westminster Abbey:The abbey held writers to a higher moral standard than the rich. Stanley cheered that Aphra Behn, writer and all-round hussy, hadn’t managed to get closer to Poets’ Corner than ‘beyond the east Cloister’. (Her stone carries one of...

Eccentricity

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Of Dust and Disks and Music for Animals

TThis amazes me:The customers that are the easiest to provide for are the hobbyists – people who want to buy ten, 20, or maybe 50 floppy disks. However, my biggest customers — and the place where most of the money comes from — are the industrial users. These are...

Revisiting, Restoring, Recomposing

David Frum’s long report on the past, present, and future of the Benin Bronzes is fascinating, though I have some serious doubts about his arguments. All of this reminds me of a visit I made 31 years ago to the Sacred Grove of Ọṣun. The Feminine Power exhibition at...

Storyboards

A storyboard by Wiard B. Ihnen for Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941). Also: storyboards from Hitchcock’s The Birds. I love storyboards, and wish they were easier to find. Here are some from John Huston’s Moby Dick:Huston was a fine artist and may have done these himself –...

Hoarded Links

Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty Jon Day on Hoardiculture:My father has always denied that he’s a hoarder, but that’s what all hoarders say. When I emailed him a picture of the CIR [Clutter Image Rating] and asked him to rate his study, he said he thought it was...

A Brief Message from the Sickbed

The headline says, “How medieval carpenters are rebuilding Notre Dame”, which is dumb, because no medieval carpenters are alive today – people don’t live 700 years, duh. The the story is fascinating, about how (let’s get this right) craftsmen trained in medieval...

The Countryside and the City

Michael Heizer’s megasculpture, “City” – about which I am immensely skeptical … but I think I have to see it, if only because of this: “The whole gestalt thwarts a culture of Instagram selfies, something Heizer is especially proud of.” And because Heizer has been...

Miracles and Tears

Wendell Berry, from Life Is a Miracle:The language we use to speak of the world and its creatures, including ourselves, has gained a certain analytical power (along with a lot of expertish pomp) but has lost much of its power to designate what is being analyzed or to...

Conservation

A lovely page describing the conservation by the Getty Museum of a Roman sarcophagus. An essay by a photographer explaining why his most faked-looking photographs aren’t fakes at all.In 1960, The Atlantic featured a big report on the proposed rebuilding of London,...

Hearses at Daybreak

A 17th-century woman’s will.Richard Seal – seen here with candidates for Salisbury Cathedral’s girls’ choir, the first such choir in an English cathedral, which had previously had boys’ choirs only – has died at age 86.Elena Urioste and Tom Poster play Donald Grant’s...

Color

An illuminated manuscript from eighteenth-century Pennsylvania – beautiful full-sized image here. How Guernica flopped: “By nearly every measure, Picasso’s huge, dark painting stalled at the starting gate. Le Corbusier, the architect who reviewed all the murals at the...

Gophers and Beatles

Kazumasa Nagai The Atlantic makes its entire 165-year archive available online – quite a big deal for those interested in American history. A lovely brief reflection by my friend and colleague Frank Beckwith on his return to Catholicism fifteen years ago. The next...

A Bustle in your Hedgerow

Art by Kit Boyd Are we from the savannah or from the forest? The history of replica food displays A terrific XKCD explainer on hailstones. In Great Britain, it’s all about the hedges – and has been for a very long time. C. S. Lewis, from an essay called “Our English...

Roadrunning

A genius for our moment: “For over a decade, a Chinese woman known as ‘Zhemao’ created a massive, fantastical, and largely fictional alternate history of late Medieval Russia on Chinese Wikipedia, writing millions of words about entirely made-up political figures,...

Spheres, Goats, Modernists

Decades ago, I looked in every issue of the Atlantic for the inevitable painting by Guy Billout – so it’s nice to see that he has an Instagram. You’ll find much to consider in this important reflection from Comment’s editor, Anne Snyder: The principle of sphere...

A Bit of Iconoclasm and Much Blogging

My friend and colleague Philip Jenkins on iconoclasm old and new: It was in this context that I had my personal encounters with an active and literal iconoclast, a brilliant English priest who had entirely imbibed the “Vatican Two” ethic at its most radical....

Discovering the Maize God

It me. No, wait, it a maize god. Some magnificent woodcuts by David Gentleman from a limited edition of Swiss Family Robinson. Sophie Yeo, of the fine environmentalist newsletter Inkcap Journal, has created a page called Six Thousand Years of Forests. It’s rather...

Getting Back to Business

Via my friend David Hooker: Isn’t it time for you to outhorse your email? Paul Klee’s puppets are delightful or creepy, and sometimes both. Some of my recent posts: A few thoughts on Justin E. H. Smith’s recent essay “Permanent Pandemic” Our desperate need to rethink...

Lenten Thoughts and Roman Images

Piranesi’s fantasias. And while we’re considering Roman things, here’s the extraordinary Aeneas intaglio from the Getty Museum: I blog, therefore I blog. I wrote a post about ownership, consumption, mortality, and “litel myn librarie,” and another about how to become...

Songs We’re Entitled to Sing

David Jones, Flora in Calix-Light, 1950 (graphite & watercolor on paper). See a brief Lenten meditation on the drawing here.   I wrote about songs you’re entitled to sing and the value of doing hard things with friends – the latter in memory of the great Paul...

Anomalous Electric Prairie

The Franks Casket is an exceptionally curious object. Made probably in Northumbria in the 8th century, it offers an eclectic collection of images: The front (shown above) features both the Adoration of the Magi and that unpleasantly weird figure from Norse-Germanic...

The Cup and the Hawk

The Hove Amber Cup (ca. 1750 BC), one of many treasures at the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. ⎯⎯ A passage from one of the great contemporary memoirs, Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk: It was always there, kneeling by Mabel on her prey, that the...

Typographical Excellence and Portable Soup

Some wonderful typography from The Wisconsin Central Lines, back in the day. From the same era on the other side of the pond, Croydon, South Loondon, 1892: ⎯⎯ I wrote a pretty long post on what I’m trying to do with my Invitation and Repair project and how the...

The Dynamic Range of Microbes

The Halstow Wassail takes place each year on a Devon cider farm that has been in the Gray family since the late 1600s. Watch this beautiful film of it. It’s all about the microbes! One of Auden’s last great poems is his “New Year Greeting” to the “Yeasts, / Bacteria,...

Harmonies and Dissonances

I’ve been blogging away, thanks to the support of people who have bought me dragons. (N.B. I could always use more dragons.) But I also have a few essays coming out in periodicals in the coming months – I’ll link to them here when they become available. Ian...

Sir Shi and the Wanderer

A peacock mosaic at the recently excavated Church of the Holy Apostles in southern Hatay province, Turkey. ⎯⎯ The Holkham Bible Picture Book, ca. 1330 ⎯⎯ A while back, I chatted with Joy Clarkson about old books. Here’s the conversation in text form. Some tags on my...

More Fakes, Plus Hittites

Claudia Rilling ⎯⎯ In my capacity as … um, let me revisit that later … anyway, I have declared 2021 to be The Year of Repair! Also, I am a Homebound Symphony. ⎯⎯ Re: my recent issue on fakes and fakery, see Byung-Chul Han: The Chinese have two different concepts of a...

Easy Edges and Harder Ones

Twofold overture: I didn’t expect, at all, to get the kind of response I have received to my Buy Me a Coffee initiative. I don’t primarily mean the financial contributions – though those have been welcome, because they allow me to focus on work on my blog that I want...

The Wordsmith on the Throne

Brazilian cover designs, from the invaluable Steven Heller. *** From an interview with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood: There are scenes in “Spencer” that require your music to be already in place, like the Christmas Eve dinner where Diana has a breakdown while a string...

From the Horse Library to the Centipawn

In central Java, Ridwan Sururi and Luna are the Kudapustaka -- the Horse Library. *** I do miss Christopher Hitchens: It is all there to emphasize the one central and polar and critical point that Dickens wishes to enjoin on us all: whatever you do — hang on to your...

Fake! (also, Advent!)

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Adventing

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Texas, London, Wisconsin

Recently, I was able to spend a few days at my great place of refuge, and also the co-sponsor of this newsletter, Laity Lodge. What a blessing. A few more photos are here. *** Kermit Oliver is a prominent and highly-regarded painter – and designer of scarves for...

The Library

World’s most beautiful libraries *** Alix Hawley on Twitter: Library patron of the week: the fella who came in, wandered around for a good while, then asked pleasantly, “What is this place?” When I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia in the early...

Prophets and Churches and a Table of Welcome

Please check out all the cool new changes at the Comment website! Among them: The Welcome Table, a second Comment newsletter, this one hosted by Greg Thompson: “a monthly column devoted to exploring the practice of hospitality as it has surprised some of our society’s...

Julian Laughs Heartily

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Imagery and Contemplation

That’s a time-lapse photo of a highway (I believe U.S. Route 163 in Utah) leading to Monument Valley – with the center of the galaxy in the background. One of many astonishing astronomical photographs by Michael Abramy – but if that particular one doesn’t blow your...

Ambiguities

Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man: I do not think that it is the essence and duty of the writer to join “with great fanfare” the main direction the culture is taking at the moment. I do not think and cannot from my very nature think that it is natural and...

Buster, Josephine, and Autumn

Autumn is just beginning to hint at us here in central Texas, but whenever it comes I find myself thinking about this passage from C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy in which he describes how in childhood he received certain “glimpses” of something beyond his experience,...

Returning in Something Almost Like Glory

If you have read The Wind in the Willows – and let me pause here to say that if you have not read the Wind in the Willows then what are you doing with your life? Stop reading this silly newsletter, call in sick to work, and start reading that wondrous book right now....

Books and Chairs and Years Gone By

Breaking Bread with the Dead will be out in paperback tomorrow! Please share the news with everyone in the entire world. *** Vermeer before: Vermeer after: See this lovely film of the restoration. *** The surprisingly complicated history of the Adirondack chair....

Talk to the Hand

Via my friend Richard Gibson, a passage from Chirologia, or, The naturall language of the hand composed of the speaking motions, and discoursing gestures thereof : whereunto is added Chironomia, or, The art of manuall rhetoricke, consisting of the naturall...

The Axe, the Wood, the House

I did something very odd, for me: I wrote a short play. It’s about J. R. R. Tolkien and W. H. Auden, who were good friends – but their friendship was occasionally troubled, I think in part because it was conducted almost wholly through the written word. So I gave them...

Done List

Good Monday morning! (Well, that’s what it is as I write, anyway.) As I look forward to a busy week, and of course experience that inevitable sense of things moving too fast, slipping away … … I think I will try Oliver Burkeman’s suggestion: keep a done list. Instead...

Architectural Thoughts

Frank Goldberg was born in Toronto and lived in Canada until he was 18, at which point his family moved to Los Angeles in search of a better climate for his chronically ill father. Eventually Frank would change his name to Frank Gehry and become the most...

It’s Good to Be Back

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Beyond Sex

Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak