I’ve been exploring a terrific repository of “Rolfeana” curated by blogger/translator James Conway on his very interesting Strange Flowers blog, its tagline — “A cabinet of human curiosities”. If like me you have a soft spot for radical individualists (i.e. transgressive “characters”), then James’ blog is just the ticket: [i]s a product of the blogger’s obsession with history’s…
Emily Temple for Literary Hub. The image below (not included on Emily’s list) happens to be one of a series of shots of a bronze sculpture by Valentina Mazzei. ArtCatholicismemily templeFlannery O’Connorpaintingphilosophical literatureValentina Mazzei
Doug and Caren talk Walker Percy and the vagaries of the self in our age. (H/T Brian Smith). a confederacy of duncesamnesiaCatholicismcomplexityjay tolsonJohn Kennedy Toolelost in the cosmospersonal identityphilosophical literaturePhilosophyThe Message in the Bottlethe moviegoerWalker Percy
Lovely talk by the late Ralph McInerny that opens with the vexed question of what one might mean by the “Catholic novel”, an idea deeply complicated by one of my favourite authors, the one and only Frederick Rolfe aka Baron Corvo, “the most anti-Catholic Catholic” (a la Buñuel). If you appreciate transgressive caustic humour (i.e. you are someone that hasn’t been…
Sorry to learn of the death of Peter Lawler. Here are a couple of obits here and here and his wiki page. Alexis de TocquevilleCatholicismpeter lawlerPolitical philosophyWalker Percy
It hasn’t gone unnoticed, at least to me, the similar thematic device deployed both by Percy (Lost in the Cosmos) and David Bowie — i.e. the alienated individual with existential concerns. For Bowie there was the recurrent space traveller — “Space Oddity” to “The Man Who Sold the World” to “Ziggy”, through to revisiting Major Tom (“Ashes to…
Chose your digital format of “The Case Of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem” made available by Project Gutenberg. Of course, one should also give a close listen to this version of Parsifal from Bayreuth 2016. And yet this other question can certainly not be circumvented: what business had he actually with that manly (alas! so unmanly) “bucolic simplicity,” that…
