‘What are you dreaming of, sir?’ Mathilde asked him. There was a note of intimacy in her question, and she had come back running and was quite out of breath in her eagerness to be with him. Julian was tired of self-suppression. In a moment of pride, he told frankly what he was thinking. The […]
Archive | Literature
Verse for Sunday: “On the Vnion”
WHEN was there contract better driven by Fate, Or celebrated with more truth of state? The world the temple was, the priest a king, The spoused pair two realms, the sea the ring. -Ben Jonson (1613). The poem was apparently occasioned by comments by James I at the opening of Parliament in 1604, following the […]
Verse for Sunday: “U.S. 1946 Kings X”
Having invented a new Holocaust, And been the first with it to win a war, How they make haste to cry with fingers crossed, King’s X–no fairs to use it anymore! –Robert Frost, Complete Poems (1949)
Batman, Appropriations, and “Augmentation”
By Ryan Davidson, guest-blogging on June 6, 2013 9:48 am in Constitutional Law, Literature, Popular Culture
My co-author James has made a few posts already this week, and I’d like to thank Professor Volokh for the opportunity to participate here. I’m going to chip in with a post about Batman based on the last few issues of Detective Comics vol. 1, # 871-881. Number 881 is actually the very last issue […]
Lucia Perillo and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Award at the Library of Congress
I have just returned from a poetry reading at the Library of Congress, the awarding of the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt prize in poetry, hosted by Rebekah Bobbitt’s son, Columbia and UT law professor and my dear friend Philip Bobbitt. It was great. I was prepared for a (deadly) serious Encounter with the Arts, and Lucia […]
Theatre of Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism?
In my last post, on microfinance, I mentioned toward the end a play by Bertolt Brecht, The Good Person of Szechuan. In it, a young woman inherits a small shop in a village, but because of her generous heart, nearly runs it into the ground because she can’t say no to anyone. So she goes […]
The Ethics of Not Finishing, But Still Criticizing, Books
Althouse notes the following, in a discussion of Megan McArdle criticizing a book while only half-way through it: A rule against criticizing books you haven’t finished would overprotect authors, since you shouldn’t finish a bad book, and it would also underprotect authors, since the critics wouldn’t disclose that they hadn’t read the whole thing. I think Althouse […]
Anis Shivani on University Presses
My Washington College of Law colleague Robert Tsai points me to an interesting Huffington Post article by Anis Shivani on new directions for university presses. I have a somewhat more critical take on this, in the sense of an interest in the economic and business models driving the presses as they move in different directions. […]
My Wandering Summer Reading
Although only mid-August, school will be starting up for me only too soon … during the summer months, I make a vow (at best half kept most years) to spend two hours a day reading stuff, anything that is not strictly driven by a current writing project. I’ve found that if I can persuade myself […]
Leviathan
By Kenneth Anderson on July 16, 2010 12:16 am in Academia, Legal Scholarship, Literature, Uncategorized
One of these days I will take the plunge and compose a “greatest influences” books list, as some of the other Conspirators have done. I have hesitated in part because my list would not tend to contain works of monumental ideas, but instead plays, works of fiction, poetry, and fragments that are not always blockbusters […]
Lauren Leto Stereotypes Readers/Authors
I like this. HT Instapundit – I hadn’t heard of Lauren Leto and her blog before, but I found this enjoyable: Stereotyping People by Their Favorite Author (by the way – I respect every author on here, kind of) J.D. Salinger Kids who don’t fit in (duh). Stephenie Meyer People who type like this: OMG. […]
Tyler Cowen in the Times Literary Supplement
My congratulations to Tyler Cowen on his lovely essay in the TLS of February 26, 2010, a review of John Lanchester, “Whoops! – Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay.” Behind the subscriber wall, alas, but it is an intriguing, elegant review and has caused me to go order the book. (IOU rather […]
White Out, a Novel
From the online diary of Mr K, inhabitant of the snowbound city of W. Day 1.15. As the snowdrifts begin to build, making it impossible to go about to Superfresh or Starbuck’s or Pain Quotidien or any other of the city W’s cherished Spring Valley locations, as it mounts just beyond the door, making it […]
Cities in Flight
Instead of a Stendhal post this week – I missed Saturday lost in the DC snow – and further to my Foundation post below, which has garnered some very interesting comments … do we have any fans of James Blish’s Cities in Flight novels? As an exercise in future history social theory, I actually think […]
“The New Foundation”
By Kenneth Anderson on January 29, 2010 11:48 pm in Literature, Popular Culture, Psychology, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Peggy Noonan notes in her weekend column that President Obama’s SOTU address worked in a name for the new program – in the tradition of the “New Deal” or Kennedy’s “New Frontier. For the Obama administration, it is the New Foundation. She is skeptical: They’ve chosen a phrase for the president’s program. They call it […]