• The Lord of the Rings has been such an important component of my psychic make-up for so long, that I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve read and reread LOTR many times, including at least twice out loud to my kids. I also love the short stories, especially “Leaf by Niggle” and “Farmer Giles

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  • In that recent discussion about Dylan, which led into a discussion of folk music, Daniel Nichols described his youthful discovery in a library of a recording of authentic Scottish folk music, and his immediate enthusiasm for it. That reminded me of an album I bought in the late '60s  called The Lark In the Morning, a recording

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  • All she asked of God was a Mercedes. Well, that, and a TV, and a few drinks.   But Jesus wants him to have a private jet. Because the one he has is getting old.

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  • Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky

    David Bentley Hart compares them as novelists, and puts Tolstoy higher. I can't give a very respectable opinion on that, because the only Tolstoy I've read was Anna Karenina many years ago, in my twenties. But I'm going to venture tentative agreement with him. In reading or re-reading Dostoevsky's major novels–Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov,

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  • Imre Madách was an Hungarian romantic poet and playwright of the 19th century. He wrote one major work, and some lesser works which are now only of interest because of it. His magnum opus is The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragédiája) – a play which ranks as one of the most important works of

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  • If you're a Richard Thompson fan, you really want to see this. Front and Center is a one-hour concert series on PBS (APT? what's the difference?). This one is the same trio that's on the Electric album, and is maybe better than the album, because the choice of material is broader. In my opinion RT's current songwriting

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  • In the guise of a review of the recent Basement Tapes re-issues, and in an unlikely place–The Weekly Standard–this is one of the better things I've ever read about Dylan. It's called "AWOL from the Summer of Love." And in case you don't read it, here's what seemed to me a very significant bit (in

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  • If our communication with the divine is stopped we begin to have strange dreams…. –Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. There's more to the sentence but I like it that way. …and set up false gods–success, people, new orders, and so on.  

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  • I feel ill-prepared to write about Larry McMurtry though of course I picked him for this project. It has been 20+ years since I read a bulk of McMurtry’s oeuvre, so why did I decide on him as a subject? Because not too long ago (within the past two years) I re-read Lonesome Dove and

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