I’m enjoying St. John’s, even though the math and science seminar is fairly difficult work. I  started with math because I knew it was the one that would give me the most grief, and I wasn’t wrong. We started with On the Nature of Things, which is one of those books that you can tell is good, but a week or two isn’t enough time to digest. I enjoyed the discussions, and I’m glad I chose to go to SJC, even though I found it hard going at times. My other seminar folks are obviously sharp as tacks: part of me feels intimidated, but I’m a first-semester first-year, and I seem to be one of ..read more

Good interview with Elena Ferrante. Good interview with Dr. Anika Prather. Good interview with Amor Towles. I don’t usually love Teen Vogue, but this is a good piece on Banned Books Week, which is this week. I am tentatively excited by the news that Netflix seems to have acquired the rights to Roald Dahl’s estate ..read more

Elle Griffin is releasing her Gothic novel on Substack, serially, for subscribers. Sally Rooney is, to put it mildly, having a moment. Interview in The Guardian on the “hell of fame.” Says Rooney, “Of course, that person could stop doing whatever it is they’re good at, in order to be allowed to retire from public life, but that seems to me like a big sacrifice on their part and an exercise in cultural self-destruction for the rest of us, forcing talented people either to endure hell or keep their talents to themselves.” Redditor breaks down why Barnes & Noble is struggling, and none ..read more

I love the fall! Excited for leaves and weather and all those good things. St. John’s has started, with my math and natural science tutorial: On the Nature of Things is tough but good, and Euclid’s Elements is excellent. I was, if I may say so, entirely correct that studying Euclid in a group, in front of a blackboard, is the correct and potentially only way to study Euclid. This blog isn’t a Mary Beard fan account, but it’s not… not a Mary Beard fan account, y’know? “Carpentry is as important as the classics” might be the closest thing to a manifesto or guiding principle ..read more

I’m alive! I dislike blogs that spend a lot of time clearing their throats about why they haven’t written lately: suffice to say — stuff happening, more soon. A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray, a novel by Dominique Barbéris that I read in translation, is good but not great. I always feel with these sorts of books that I’m not clever enough for them. Very aesthetic, very strong sense of mood, but perhaps not enough plot to drive things forward. I quoted Natalie Babbitt in an earlier post and was reminded of the quote — “…like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses on its turning ..read more

I haven’t listened yet, but re: my Middlemarch post, The Readers Karamazov have a podcast on Middlemarch. Everything I’ve Learned about Being a “Professional” Writer in One Post. In honor of Andrew Sullivan’s new books, here he is on the Classics. I also enjoyed his Conversation with Tyler. “Gone are the whimsical elements, and in come the suspense, the gothic and the noir. The new Latin American Boom is here, and it is being led by women.” Good piece on the internal stuff behind Random House paying more than $5 million for Cuomo’s book during the pandemic, before he resigned from office ..read more

The author’s purpose was to be a generous rural historian, and this very redundancy of touch, born of abundant reminiscence, is one of the greatest charms of her work. It is as if her memory was crowded with antique figures, to whom for every tenderness she must grant an appearance. —Henry James, reviewing Middlemarch I finished Middlemarch yesterday and I’m still digesting it. It’s a sprawling novel, following three groups and their various shenanigans. As I tweeted the other night, it doesn’t so much have a main character so much as a main ensemble. It took me a bit of digging an ..read more

Early impressions here. The benefit to doing two discussion salons on the Great Books is that you read a book, discuss a book, and then discuss a book again a month later with the second group. This digestion period has been the most useful thing when it comes to reading the books, since it provides a reason to come back to my notes and assorted post-its about each work. Having the benefit of a second go-around, I’ve clarified a lot of my first impressions about the book, especially around the broader applicability of what he’s talking about. Specifically, I realized that I was reading it ..read more

Per the Summer 2021 edition of The Sewanee Review, there is a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the horizon. I am firmly on Team #NewTranslations, so I’m very excited by this (especially since I didn’t enjoy Metamorphoses the first time round). Electric Literature’s “Read Like a Writer.” “You know that almost nothing about the Iliad is a particularly good fit for that night, but it’s not clear if you can separate the two stories anymore.” One of the best pieces of writing I’ve read on the Iliad. Dickens on Italy. Translation/edition recommendations for Lucretius’ On th ..read more

You can now volunteer your expertise to help struggling Classics programs, via the Society for Classical Studies. Interview with one of the #DisruptTexts founders. Classics lecturer asks students to edit Wikipedia with what they learn, in lieu of a final paper. Some notes on Heart of Darkness. “During my reading this year, it keeps standing out to me that some of the most excellent characters in given books are the servants. Have you noticed that literature is full of stories where a servant steals the show?” Old-but-good piece on the literature purchasing habits of the French ..read more