I write about kings and prophets. Vancouver, BC.
I mentioned Vance's memoir in the last issue so excellent to see this scathing treatment of it in the current one (along with Hollinghurst on that equally odd convert, Ronald Firbank).
James ButlerFor the new issue of the @lrb.co.uk I read J.D. Vance's tremendously unpleasant memoir of his conversion, which is at once an evasion of moral responsibility and a pre-2028 argument for a generic Christian nationalism. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I'm just back from the UK - hardly the greenest country - where this denialism just looks weird.
Max FawcettThis is genuinely astonishing: a piece by the Globe and Mail’s editorial board lamenting the “new normal” of wildfires and summer smoke and no mention whatsoever of a) climate change, or b) the burning of fossil fuels that causes it. #cdnpoli www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...
The final repost - time to write something new.
London Review of Books‘In accepting Catholic authority, writers unleashed their imaginations. As Graham Greene said, quoting Saki, “When once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations, its possibilities become practically limitless.”’ @michaelledgerlomas.bsky.social on converts. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Come to the LRB site to read Emily Wilson on Nolan, linger to discover....wait...come back
London Review of Books‘Although R.H. Benson became the loudest Catholic voice of Edwardian England, his voluminous output shows how converts who had it all their own way often ended up ranting (the dogma in his novels was the “gritty powder in the jam”).’ Michael Ledger-Lomas on converts. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I hope some museum will collect the last traces of the Hi, Historian Here Culture.
Liesbeth CorensGraduation-ready! How many of these can I smuggle in the sleeves of my gown… Thanks SO much for the supply, @royalhistsoc.org! They’ll look splendid on our newly-minted historians!