Carl Scott

Major spoilers alert here, as Colin Brown gets me thinking about the strangest and briefest scene in the great go-see-it-now film MUD, and suggests how it might be the key to understanding how it ends. He describes it thusly, on his Signpostings blog: One of the eeriest yet most profound visuals . . . . . Continue Reading »

So you’ve now all had time to see MUD. Peter’s reading of it as something of a response to TRUE GRIT, and in dialogue with other films about how The South responds to American Modernity, is a promising and characteristically Lawlerian take. Jeff Nichols does seem just the kind of director . . . . Continue Reading »

Oh Billy Collins, I cannot say so much about those poems, the ones you write, the ones you read. I know like Ogden Nash you make my wife and I laugh, and you read your poems oh so well. And while I try to be somewhat funny here, I cannot but thank you (sincere!)—for your blend of verse . . . . Continue Reading »

John Presnall really let us down. At the end of his great GATSBY post a few weeks ago, he indicated he was going to talk about MUD . I hadn’t heard of it, and the reference passed me by. John didn’t post any more on it, alas. And so now, a full month after its release, I just got around . . . . Continue Reading »

Should there be a law against the NSA doing what it recently was revealed (not really for the first time) to have been doing? I confess I have not yet been convinced by the case against the collection of heaps of telephone call records only to be sifted in restricted FISA situations; what . . . . Continue Reading »

1. I love Wendell Berry. Still. 2. I love Wendell Berry-ites, especially the evangelical Christian ones out there. Last year I attended a wonderful Wendell Berry book group which met in the jewel of Lynchburg, the White Hart Café, the best Inklings-themed beer-serving coffee shop on the . . . . Continue Reading »

Jordan Bloom at The American Conservative hips us to the surprising fact that there is going to be a film about the Copperheads, that is, about the Northern Democrat political movement that opposed continuing the Civil War, and especially once the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued. The . . . . Continue Reading »

In the comments to Kate’s heroin post below, Peter says that heroin was a drug of productivity for Charlie Parker. Well, to rule that out, or, to say it is the truth, would require one to be able to look pretty far into Parker’s soul, and most particularly, into his musical genius. One . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s his piece from the CRB now available on Real Clear Politics. Read the whole thing, especially for its Bloomian characterization of Bowdoin’s openness, and its wonderful paragraph on the banning of the alcohol-free dorm, but make sure you study the second sentence here. Maybe we . . . . Continue Reading »

Picking up from my nightmare post below, proceeding into the daylight of what’s come to light so far, I would say that . . . . . . even a glance at the most reassuringly-framed wire-service newspaper stories about Friday’s hearing on the IRS scandal must leave one seriously appalled. . . . . Continue Reading »