In February 1909, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto in the French newspaper Le Figaro. The manifesto exalted the future over the past, violence and aggression over peace and ecstasy, immorality over morality, men over women, the young over the old, the machine over the land, and the known over the [...]

James Joyce’s great novel Ulysses begins with the line “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” – and ends with the great affirmation “…yes I said yes I will Yes.” The 780-odd pages between contain whole worlds, condensed into a single [...]

The full title of Ann Coulter’s new book is Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America. And the product description of the book begins: “The demon is a mob, and the mob is demonic. The Democratic Party activates mobs, depends on mobs, coddles, publicizes and celebrates mobs – it is the mob.” Do I [...]

Does anyone know if David Foster Wallace intended for his notes for The Pale King to be shaped into a book after his death? I doubt he communicated this to someone before his suicide three years ago, but I haven’t read much about the book yet, so Wallace might have done exactly that. This brings [...]

http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf Two Gentleman of Lebowski – A Dramatic Interpretation – watch more funny videos

Josh Cacopardo has a well-written, funny, and enthusiastic essay in The Curator magazine entitled “The Willful Death of a Luddite”, about his conversion to e-readers. Cacopardo cites a number of reasons for his move “into the future of literary technology,” including the availability of free out-of-copyright books, the convenience of e-readers, and “the rapture of having an [...]

I’m writing an article for Neue Magazine about the possibility of “Slow Church.” I’m grateful for the opportunity to explore an idea that began as a hunch, but it’s clear now that 2,500 words will only whet my appetite with this topic. (It’s also clear that I’m not the only one to notice this connection. [...]

I’ve been struck the last couple days by the power of poetry to act as an antidote to so many of the things that seek to abstract me from myself, my family and friends, my world, and God. Today I read an ancient Greek epigramma called “Earthquake” and of course I thought of the catastrophe in [...]

Dave Johnson and I are writing the Summer Reading Guide for the July/August issue of Relevant Magazine. So for the past several weeks I have surfed the web, trolled Amazon.com, and flipped through publisher’s catalogs to look for potential books. We also received a couple recommendations via Twitter. Yesterday I compiled a longlist of books [...]

Theo Huxtable and the Ides of March