Friday Links
Scratching Up the Sky by Ryan Daffurn
Joshua Hren reviews Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
Alexander Raikin on A Pattern of Noncompliance
David K. Anderson on John Donne’s Devotions
Malcolm Guite on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
“Apophatic” by Amit Majmudar in First Things
LuElla D’Amico on Love and Marriage in the Age of Austen
Scratching Up the Sky by Ryan Daffurn
The image above is from Ryan’s upcoming exhibition. Ryan is an Australian artist. You can learn more about him and his work HERE.
Joshua Hren reviews Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
Though New Yorker critic Vinson Cunningham’s debut novel Great Expectations is set in a land that separates church and state, the narrator is all ears for political inflections that are inescapably religious until the end. At a Los Angeles fundraiser, David the campaign-aid is startled to find a Pentecostal pastor who—though he previously dismissed politics as “distraction from the work of holiness”—has paid no small fee to see the Senator in person. “Something is shifting, son,” the pastor explains, seeing “a move of God in the campaign that [can’t] be explained in purely political terms.”
Alexander Raikin on A Pattern of Noncompliance
Assisted suicide and euthanasia have not surprisingly, led to abuses. This article gives a good indication of the sorts of abuses that result from legalization of these practices. Please take the time to read the whole thing:
Ontario’s euthanasia regulators have tracked 428 cases of possible criminal violations — and not referred a single case to law enforcement, say leaked documents.
David K. Anderson on John Donne’s Devotions
Even in his suffering Donne is not a man to be placated by trite platitudes about divine love. Grace may be offered freely, but it entails the exposure and destruction of sin and Donne hates and fears his sinfulness. Employing a metaphor that cannot, under these circumstances, be casually chosen, he writes that though he would avoid physical death through any means at his disposal, he has habitually courted the second death of the soul, enamored of the sin that is the fever’s spiritual equivalent.
Malcolm Guite on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
This is part one from an interview with Malcolm Guite from James Finley and Kirsten Oates
about the nature of poetry to speak to directly to the heart, as it attempts to give shape and form to the ineffable. They also discuss the first two of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, providing additional depth and insight into Eliot’s use of pattern, exploration of time and place, as well as his references to the mystics.
“Apophatic” by Amit Majmudar in First Things
Here’s the first two lines of the first stanza, as a teaser:
Not with the myth and phosphorus of metaphor. Not
with lines of force looped in true-love knots.
LuElla D’Amico on Love and Marriage in the Age of Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged that ever since the 1811 publication of her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen has shaped our understanding of love and marriage in the nineteenth century. Now Rory Muir’s new book reminds us that it behooves researchers and readers alike to consider the specific social and cultural contexts that shaped Austen’s characterization and themes. It is these contexts that helped create the composite vision of romance she provided to the world—a vision that continues to enthrall us today.
