J. L. Wall

In his “City Meditations” series (which you really should be reading), Alan Jacobs offers a critique  of Wendell Berry’s 2012 Jefferson Lecture . Berry’s “Boomers and Stickers,” he points out, is a nice rhetorical device, but break down as categorical tools . . . . Continue Reading »

The Drive-By Truckers released their fourth studio album in June, 2003—but it seems more fitting to take Memorial Day as its tenth anniversary. It is, after all, the modern successor to the Decoration Day from which the album and title track draw their names. The songs, frontman Patterson Hood . . . . Continue Reading »

Spring is here and summer is fast approaching, so now seems as good a time as any to offer some suggestions for reading, preferably outdoors. Since Rod Dreher’s The Little Way of Ruthie Leming has been on my mind , I’ll let it inspire my choices. The following works are frequently . . . . Continue Reading »

A great deal has already been written about Rod Dreher’s new book, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (including William Doino’s  review ). I only have two short comments to add to the discussion. The first grows out of a conversation I had with a bookshop owner several weeks ago. On . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s easy to read, perform, or teach Othello as Shakespeare’s race play—with, I should say, good cause. In this regard, he may well have written a play that speaks more strongly to today’s America than to his own country. This is also the play of jealousy, possession, and . . . . Continue Reading »

A few more thoughts on wonder and contemporary culture, if you’ll bear with me. Wonder as a sought-after object (as opposed to a manner of apprehending what is found) becomes, perhaps, just another way of curing boredom— Walker Percy wasn’t advocating a Russian assault on Greece so . . . . Continue Reading »

My  previous post  on  Star Trek  and wonder caused a reader to ask what I thought of the thematic darkness of  Deep Space Nine , one of the later  Star Trek  series. The show takes up war and crime in the  Star Trek  future to a greater extent than any . . . . Continue Reading »

Saturday evening, burned out and brain-dead after two weeks of grading papers, I plopped down in the living room to take advantage of my weekend by watching the first two Star Trek films. It had been, probably, fifteen years since I watched the 1979 Star Trek , and it was every bit as strange as I . . . . Continue Reading »

In December, Paul Elie caused a small stir by claiming that “the novel of belief” has disappeared. I don’t want to wade into that debate—-for those who missed it, Andrew Sullivan has a good series of round-up posts —-but instead to look at one of the exceptions to . . . . Continue Reading »