After a couple of years and several recommendations, I finally read Dan Simmon’s epic novel. I’ve been a Homer aficionado for most of my life (thanks, Mrs. Farmer!), and an “expert” ever since I took my first class in graduate school on epic poetry.
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Meeting Jack McDevitt
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I had not read Jack McDevitt until I heard he was coming to this year’s Crossroads Conference. I’m embarrassed because I’m supposed to be up on all things science fiction. His novel Seeker won a Nebula award in 2006 for best novel (and most of his other novels have been nominated), and I [...]
Anathem
It took me a month. Perhaps longer. However, I finally finished Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. It was not my favorite book. I’m not even sure I’d recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a Stephenson enthusiast. I’d probably say: “Read Snow Crash, or The Diamond Age.” The former is a brilliant, fast-moving, and smart book — [...]
Arnold’s Disinterested Critic
Matthew Arnold, in his “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” examines the role of the critic in society and the idea that the “critical power” is of lower rank than the “creative power.”
Notes on Arnold’s “Modern Literature”
Matthew Arnold attempts in this speech, “On the Modern Element in Literature,” a “general survey of classical literature” in an effort to deliver his age from its current imperfection, i.e., to comprehend man’s present and past.
Shelley’s Defense of Poetry
Shelley begins his “A Defense of Poetry” by making a distinction between reason and imagination: “Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole.”
On Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment
The only thing that would be more ponderous and difficult than trudging through Kant’s prose in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment would be attempting to put his aesthetic philosophy found within to the test.