Books
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He sought no mystical revelation. It was enough for him to be aware of the Nunc Dimittis. The reference is to Ernest Dowson's Catholicism. The remark is by the editor, Mark Longaker, of a 1962 edition of Dowson's poems .
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This may taste good to someone who has never eaten a biscuit. –Novelist Lee Smith's mother, on her first bagel From Lee Smith's memoir, Dimestore. Which I recommend. Bagels are fine. I've eaten a good many over the years. But they aren't as good as biscuits. And really I never quite got over the fact that…
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Several months ago I asked for recommendations for a Dante translation. Since then I've taken a look at Esolen, Musa, and James, and have settled on Esolen. I would have looked at Sayers, too, but it would have required inter-library loan, which I didn't want to bother with, since there seems to be general agreement that…
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Posted on Facebook as well as here: Is there any living non-fiction writer whom you would recommend for the quality of his or her prose alone, regardless of subject? Is there a Newman of our time? Not in absolute quality (highly unlikely) but commanding a similar regard? Preferably not someone who specializes in rich descriptions…
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It's available from Amazon. And if you prefer to patronize an actual book store, they should be able to order it, at least in the U.S. The ISBN is 978-0-9974708-0-2.
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UPDATE, April 2025: if you have arrived at this page from a search, please have a look at this post, written after having read the Esolen and Longfellow translations. Consider Longfellow, if you can handle his more antique manner. I've read the Inferno twice over the years, but not gone any further. I decided I really…
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But here is a bit of eccentricity of which I was unaware: I knew that as children they had written long involved stories about an imaginary country, but I didn't know that Charlotte and Branwell, at least, had written these stories in script so small as to be unreadable for most people without a magnifying…
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When I was a college student in the 1960s, this was one of those books that seemed to have a certain prominence and yet to be little read. As it is not a long and difficult book, this may have meant that it had been prominent, but was fading. I never read it, and I…
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"Well, and so everything's falling apart…. Everybody sees that it can't go on like this. It's all too strained and bound to snap," Pierre said (as people have been saying as long as governments have existed, once they look attentively at any government whatsoever). –Tolstoy, War and Peace I finished War and Peace a couple of days…
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I mentioned a few weeks ago (in a comment on Louise's George Orwell post) that I had listened to a recording of part of this book and had found it disappointing. I knew the recording was at least part of the problem. I just didn't care for the actor's voice and style, and didn't want to…
Light On Dark Water 